Scientists have been able to pin down the most accurate estimate yet for how fast a supermassive black hole is spinning. The answer is "fast": near the speed of light.

The black hole in question is more than 2 million miles across, with a surface traveling near the speed of light. It is at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1365 and is the equivalent of about 2 million solar masses. Don't worry, this black hole not an imminent danger to us, given that it's in a galaxy 60 million light years away.

Two instruments helped make these measurements: NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, and the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite. Scientists used these tools to detect high-energy X-rays to determine the black hole's spin. Although similar measurements have been attempted before, this is the first time scientists have been able to show that the spin rate can be calculated conclusively.

Astronomers found that the spin is at least 84% of the maximum value allowed by Einstein's general theory of relativity. In other words: Einstein was right, again.

"What’s amazing in this observation is that we can see the warping and twisting of spacetime, the black hole distorting the very fabric of our universe," NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said at a press briefing Wednesday.

Harrison gave a mind-boggling illustration of what "distortion of spacetime" means: For this particular black hole, if you were standing near the event horizon - the point at which nothing can escape from a black hole - you would be turning around once every four minutes just to stand still.

You may agree with Harrison that "black holes are really weird."

Black holes are dense regions of space that have collapsed in on themselves to the point where not even light can escape the enormous gravitational pull. Still, they are some of the brightest objects in the universe because of the massive amounts of energy released when matter gets eaten by a black hole.

Around a black hole is an accretion disk, dust and gas that's being drawn into the black hole, constantly spiraling toward it. High-energy radiation shines out as the black hole compresses matter. Supermassive black holes in particular are found at the centers of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

We still don't know how black holes came to be in the first place, but the first seeds were there "just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang," writes Christopher S. Reynolds of the Department of Astronomy and the Joint Space Science Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park, in an accompanying article in Nature.

What we know about how galaxies formed and evolved is closely tied to our understanding of these supermassive black holes, he writes. "The energy released by a growing supermassive black hole can be so powerful that it disrupts the normal growth of the host galaxy; in extreme cases, the AGN (active galactic nucleus) can terminate all subsequent growth of the galaxy."

Black holes start relatively small and get huge over time in one of two ways. They can just keep eating material that falls in; over time, mass accumulates. Or, when two galaxies collide, their black holes can merge into a bigger black hole.

"Measuring the spin is a way to understand how the black hole grew, and this in turn is linked to galaxy evolution," Guido Risaliti, lead study author and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told CNN.

The "dream" is to perform these sorts of measurements on galaxies much further away, so that scientists could track the evolution of those structures, too, Risaliti said.

"In order to do this kind of analysis for hundreds of black holes in the very distant universe, we really need the next-generation observatory, a new observatory which would need to be built with much higher sensitivity," Risaliti said.

soundoff(653 Responses)

Can we just give Bob Price the biggest idiot award and let him be happy?

March 1, 2013 at 8:01 am |

Reason over Reason

Too late...we gave him that award last year...

March 1, 2013 at 8:09 am |

bob_price_sux

Bob is probably dancing at his church right now with a handful of rattlesnakes....

March 1, 2013 at 9:20 am |

Ed

We can only hope!

March 12, 2013 at 4:52 pm |

Edward

He fits the profile of one of those fanatical christians who likes to over exagerate things. BTW Im a religious person but I hate comming accross folks like that. I find them very annoying how they put god in everything. LIke hey I took a crap and he resembled christ so this must be a miracle or I won on a video game so its gods intervention. Sheeeeesh

March 1, 2013 at 9:33 am |

john the atheist

is bob price trying to get on a talk show or get his own reality series ("the biggest dummy" on the idiot channel)? because no one can be *that* stupid. even the pope - who talks directly to his imaginary god - is retiring because he's had enough of this religious nonsense garbage.

March 1, 2013 at 9:41 am |

TDJ

The Pope is infinitely more intelligent than you. That's a fact.

March 1, 2013 at 10:47 am |

Drearily

Religious zealots like Bob Price exhibit behaviors identical to those found in the common, ignorant bully. They are so terrified—and perhaps a little embarrassed—of things they don't understand, they have no choice but to fall back on the convenience of religion and the belief in a higher power. Those with more scientific and openly objective minds, however, have chosen a different path, one based in taking responsibility for their actions and their own destinies. People like us will never fall back into a church after making a mistake, then wipe our hands of the matter and state “Oh, that wasn’t actually our fault. That was god’s will.” If we spilled the milk, instead of running around in a circle, then falling to our knees in some sort of panicky prayer; we’ll simply invent the paper towel and calmly clean it up. It makes perfect sense that Mr. Price—and others like him—would be posting comments such as these, because they fear pain. So much so, they’ve embraced an icon which represents the removal of that pain. They simply cannot deal with it on their own accord. They lack the intellectual will to observe the universe laid out before them in a more objective manner.

Now, we scientific people have been more than patient with the antics of these individuals—preaching the word of god, telling us how to live our lives, and tossing bibles at us like a chimp flings poop when it’s terrified—and I, personally, have grown considerably annoyed that they’ve never taken the time to actually look at the scientific data we’ve gathered. They’ve clearly demonstrated here—with ignorant comments such as not knowing how many miles a light year has, or that light cannot be captured—that they have not. It is this one-sided conversation that confirms how much they are not only dragging our world’s economy down over and over, but more so hampering the development of mankind as a whole. It reminds me of a saying I once heard: “If a man thinks he’s going to die tomorrow, he’s probably going to find a way to make it happen.”

Please, please put that depressing, doom-and-gloom, 2000 year old hack of a book down, you’re scaring the children.

Do I have all the answers? No. Do I have the absolute truth somewhere in the back of my closet under a pile of laundry? I sure hope not! Is there a higher power out there, after all? Will we one day get to the end of the universe and find something out there tapping it’s foot going “Took you long enough!”? I can’t answer that. But I refuse to give up poking around, looking for it, because I am not afraid of that final truth, no matter what it may turn out to be.

My religion is simple: In order to understand the universe, it will require a sentience composed of nearly all the matter in the universe. And that’s the god I’d be willing to talk to.

(Oh, uhh... Bob... please, stop using all those capital letters and abusing the question mark. What did that poor, little thing ever do to you? Bully!)

March 1, 2013 at 12:27 pm |

Deedubya

Fantastic comment. You have described the situation very well and explained why the rational among us object to being hampered by this insane and destructive religious ideology.

March 12, 2013 at 5:36 pm |

Carml

...... and just when did we ever really think Einstein was wrong ???

March 4, 2013 at 10:15 pm |

Drearily

Who's 'we' ?

March 11, 2013 at 1:04 pm |

mattski

OK all together now:
There once was a lady Miss Bright,
whose travelled faster than light.
She set off one day in a relative way,
and came back the previous night.

March 1, 2013 at 7:49 am |

Retired Army Officer

Matt.....a person would really have to be a geek to appreciate that little ditty.

BTW......I liked it........

March 1, 2013 at 9:50 am |

AA

This is... sad. I could give you the whole explanation of what the scientific method is and why it's a good way to get information, but that is redundant with what others have posted and is something you could easily look up yourselves. I'll try a different approach.

Nothing in this article is remotely religious one way or another. I'll admit from the start that I don't believe in any sort of god, but I am pretty familiar with Christian tradition (the Jesuits were quite instructive!). According to that tradition, man was created in the image of God. Therefore, it's reasonable for me to imagine that God might look at things with a perspective fairly comprehensible to me, and one of the most basic things about creating anything is that you would almost always intend for a creation to make use of its most unique and useful features. After all, those special features that define a creation tend to be the reason for the creation in the first place; no one builds a computer with the purpose of using it as a doorstop, thereby wasting all the computational abilities they put into it. In the case of humanity, the one thing we have that is truly special is our intelligence; it would be very strange indeed for a God that is supposedly of a similar image to us to make us this way and expect us not to think about stuff very much. Even if the Bible really is divine revelation, I can't imagine a God that made us with such capability for understanding and is supposed to have a great deal of love for us to boot would expect us to use it as an end-all for knowledge and to reject anything external, basically leaving most of our gift of intellect wasted.

Heck, I recall that same God telling us we had dominion over the rest of nature even though clearly we are not the biggest, strongest, fastest, or otherwise best at anything among the elements of nature we know other than thinking. How would he expect us to exert such dominion except by developing a superior understanding of how nature works and using it to our advantage? In the past it was figuring out how to grow crops and forge iron weapons to defend ourselves; today it may be smashing atoms and observing black holes. Either way, it sure seems like those doing that are pretty biblical to me whereas those who come on science articles and post about how we shouldn't care about this stuff are like the servant who, given the money to hold by his master, buried it in a field. You Bible scholars probably remember how that parable ended; that servant earned nothing but scorn from his master whereas those who took what their master gave them and used it wisely were rewarded. Now please stop posting ignorant stuff in articles like this. Instead, perhaps read the articles and appreciate the subject matter for what it is; you might learn something.

March 1, 2013 at 7:07 am |

John

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It doesn't work and it annoys the pig.

March 1, 2013 at 7:21 am |

Lou

They can conclusively tell us how fast a black hole is spinning 60 million light year away, but they can't cure the common cold. What bull.

March 1, 2013 at 7:39 am |

AA

Sure we can cure the common cold. Just take any infected region, heat to 1000 F or hotter, and hold at that temperature for let's say 72 hours. I guarantee that every last virus will be eradicated.

Of course, you'll say this is a bad solution since you may note it's very fatal to the sick person. Trying to do so little harm to someome that the treatment is less bad than a few days of coughing and a runny nose while completely eradicating thousands of tiny viruses that have infected many different types of cells when you aren't even sure which very particular type of virus you're dealing with of the thousands that could be responsible is an overwhelmingly complex and tricky problem. Perhaps we'll solve it someday, but it does not strike me as unusual that we managed to measure the spin of a black hole, a problem that involved no weighing of competing interests but merely overcoming problems of distance, before we managed to cure the common cold. If anything, your objection perhaps reminds us to be humble as there's much that we don't know, but it would be purely foolish to reject learning anything merely because we can't learn everything.

March 1, 2013 at 8:02 am |

Reason over Reason

For that matter....god cannot cure the common cold either....otherwise it wouldn't exist....

March 1, 2013 at 8:12 am |

CMJ

@Lou You my good sir are ignorant. You probably don’t even know the first thing about micro biology. Try expanding your horizons a little.

March 1, 2013 at 8:50 am |

Raegan

Space and sickness are two completely different subjects. The reason we have trouble curing the common cold is due to the fact that the virus is always changing and never has the same structure as the last one. It is the same idea as the flu where there would have to a vaccine every year, but the common cold is more complex than the flu. Space never changes and can be easily grasped once you have a lead.

If there was no cure for the common cold, then every one would still be walking around, or in bed, with colds.
You're just saying the cure doesn't work as fast as you'd like.

March 1, 2013 at 9:20 am |

RM13

Lou.. you have little to no knowledge about the virus that causes the common cold, medicine, the drug discovery process, black holes, or astrophysics..yet you have complete certainty of opinion. This is a prime example of what is wrong with people and why corrupt leaders/politicians can so easily grab power and mislead us. knee jerk reactions lead to unshakable certainty of opinion...sad.....be quick to listen and slow to speak, seek knowledge and understanding and always have an open mind.... you have done none of this.

If there was no cure for the common cold, people would still be walking around, or laying in bed, with colds. You're just saying the cure is not as fast as you'd like.

March 1, 2013 at 9:38 am |

albert

"For that matter....god cannot cure the common cold either....otherwise it wouldn't exist...." This is where tour understanding of God is grossly inaccurate. According to the Bible, mankind has free will. We can either choose to believe in God or not. From the very beginning of the Bible, man chose to do things his own way. The question of God's universal sovereignty was called into question. The problems we have today, even down to the common cold are a result of man ruling himself. We unfortunately have to deal with the consequences of our own actions. It's interesting that man claims there is no God reasoning that if there was one, we would have no problems, and yet, we don't want our free will trampled on. Science is fascinating and has achieved things beyond our wildest dreams. But what we need to understand is that science studies, builds, and creates based on what already exists. We are to believe (and rightfully so), that "things" by science were created, and yet we are taught to believe that the very things science copies has no creator? Something very wrong with that picture. The big problem is that religion has distorted what the Bible teaches with Pagan rituals and Greek mythology. They have made a mockery of God. In my mind, science and God can co-exhist. I think is outstanding that science can peer into the universe and be awed by what they find. Among other things, perfect order that we can literally set time to and navigate by. Of all beings on earth (approx. 100 million species by some reports), we, man, are the only ones with the ability to reason, or to even the develop the concept of a God. Man has an inherent drive/need to worship something. Whether it be a God, a statue, another person, science, atheism, etc. Unfortunately, because of our desire to rule ourselves, we have lost our way. I know most of you scoff and don't want to hear it, the Bible does offer hope. The question of universal sovereignty will be will be answered. God wants us to realize that with all our gifts, we do not know how to govern ourselves. He is letting us see that for ourselves. And as the Bible promises, he will step in and save us from ourselves. Something that science does not even pretend to be able to do.

March 1, 2013 at 9:44 am |

bergerfry

I don't want them to cure the common cold. It would cost too much, insurance would be even more costly, people wouldn't have anything to complain about, and most of all I want my immune system to get some exercise once in a while without pharmaceutical help.

March 1, 2013 at 9:46 am |

Jess

@Albert,
If god know everything you have done, are doing and will do, that is not free will. Sorry.

March 15, 2013 at 5:04 pm |

Greg

Excellent post and I agree – and I'm a Christ follower..

March 1, 2013 at 7:42 am |

awayidiots

you are an idiot... Christianity is only believable if you consistently lie to yourself about reality....

March 1, 2013 at 9:15 am |

joe

Which also means you're an atheist. Because you've dismissed every other god but your own.

March 1, 2013 at 9:39 am |

Dum Bass

Could you find a better place to troll???? Science, critical thinking ain't the place to be thumpin' ur bible. We know better.

March 1, 2013 at 8:13 am |

CMJ

For starters I am a Christian (I categorize myself to make it easy. I don’t agree with “religion” it is the cause of most of our problems, I believe in relationship with god.) To my point, I really agree with your post. I love science and especially computer science.

I can’t understand why people of “religious” beliefs say not to most any science. Maybe because they are caught up in being blind sheep to their religion and refuse to think for their selves. Prime examples are Mormons, Catholics and Muslims. They do what they are told and that is it. Free thinking not permitted. I can say this because I was Mormon for the first 18 years of my life but that is another story for another day.
Anyway good post and good points (the parable was a great example).

March 1, 2013 at 8:33 am |

Aimz

I am a Mormon, and I love science! That's why I became an engineer. I find that the LDS church does encourage "free-thinking" by promoting personal prayer, personal scripture study, personal revelation, and secular education. Great post, AA, that pretty much sums up my feelings as well. If we really believe that God created our universe, then that should give us even more reason to discover what He has created. I suspect that fear of science stems from insecurity in faith, but the two should never be in conflict if God truly created all things.

March 1, 2013 at 9:57 am |

Excellent Post

That was an excellent post

March 1, 2013 at 8:35 am |

Ray Zimmerman

Well said! I'm a Christian and find this absolutely fascinating. Thanks for trying to find common ground instead of being a moron.

March 1, 2013 at 8:35 am |

halfbakedlunatic

'god' is an idiotic idea promoted by immoral people to control and pacify the weak minded.

March 1, 2013 at 8:40 am |

dan

Dude right on I agree with you! The complexity of the human mind is a mirror image of that of God's. Though on a smaller scale..

March 1, 2013 at 8:48 am |

Grumpster

All of this is not relevant since there is no god.

March 1, 2013 at 8:49 am |

Rios

Well put, AA. You are a wise individual!

March 1, 2013 at 9:05 am |

dATRUTH

Brilliant man. Brilliant

March 1, 2013 at 9:31 am |

Shirley Saum

That is a very thoughtful answer. People have wondered for years if there really is a heaven and a hell. My gut feeling is that Black Holes were created as Hell where the unrepentant child abusers, Syrian mass murders and other evil creatures will be sent to spend eternity Take a look at the painting "The Scream" – looks like the subject iss running from a Black Hole.

March 1, 2013 at 10:09 am |

Edcode

AA ++
Rightly said

March 1, 2013 at 10:21 am |

Aaron

As a deeply religious person with a strong Christian belief system,. I can honestly say that this is the most reasoned and respectful response I've ever heard an Atheist give to those who hold a belief in God on any subject. Intelligence is not to be held in disdain. I just happen to believe in God. That does not keep me from learning all that i can on this earth. I have faith that those things I do not understand will eventually be made known unto me, either through further learning or sometime after this life. I went to a university that, while owned by the church I attend, did not throw science out the window in the face of scripture. I took anthropology and learned the same things about australopithecus that would have been taught in any other school. I found this refreshing and loved the fact that we were taught what we as people know and then were left to ourselves to find common ground with our beliefs.

March 1, 2013 at 10:29 am |

Warren Zebrof

God is present most people have just given up trying to seek Him out

March 1, 2013 at 7:03 am |

John

I find it unsurprisingly ironic that the term "intelligent design" was born out of ignorance.

I am relieved that science is not actually hinged upon the dogma of religion, for it would be a dark and cold existence for eternity.

March 1, 2013 at 7:24 am |

Bob

There is no god, religion was invented to control the ignorant.

March 1, 2013 at 7:45 am |

Sugar

So well said! The more intelligent a person, I find, the less likely they are to believe God created all. Geez – the Bible was written when people probably still believed the earth was flat; it has been rewritten a gazillion times it seems. Oh, well...

March 1, 2013 at 10:30 am |

Dan

Keep your imaginary friends to yourself.

March 1, 2013 at 9:05 am |

dATRUTH

Well tell me where he is and I'll find him

March 1, 2013 at 9:36 am |

Wrathbrow

So people should stop going to church to seek out god. I agree.

March 1, 2013 at 9:37 am |

Dana

Invisible and imaginary are very similar.

March 1, 2013 at 9:41 am |

bspurloc

same for the great spaghetti monster

March 1, 2013 at 10:46 am |

John

Wouldn't it be an interesting destiny if the black holes continued to devour everything around them until black holes were finally consumed by one super massive black hole, leaving only a point of singularity once again which violently erupted into a big bang and the process started all over.

March 1, 2013 at 7:00 am |

Reason over Reason

Now, THAT would be interesting....

March 1, 2013 at 8:14 am |

End Religion

That is one hypothesis ( see Big Crunch or Big Bounce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe ), however there is increasing evidence we live in a flat, infinitely expanding universe that won't crunch or bounce but continue to expand as stars die out over billions of years (Big Freeze).

March 1, 2013 at 8:17 am |

Trey

I was thinking something along the same lines, except you nailed it to the t. Very good observation, like a huge recylcing pit. And possibly this happens over, and over infinite, so possibly trillions of years from now, we will be typing the very same thing we are now because eventually this all may repeat itself somehow.

March 1, 2013 at 8:25 am |

MarylandBill

It is alas highly unlikely given our current understanding of the Universe. At one point we believed that the expansion of the Universe was slowing down and could possible shrink again back to the Big Crunch. However for the last 10 years or so we have known that the rate of expansion is increasing. In other words, it seems unlikely that the Universe will ever shrink again.

March 1, 2013 at 8:55 am |

Dan

I think it's possible that it has happened many times before.

March 1, 2013 at 8:58 am |

PaganScorp

I was wondering the same thing, as I now see some others were too. Perhaps it's not too far fetched at all. It would be one good way of recycling all the good we've taken out of and all the crap we've put back into this wonderful planet. Maybe next time around greed won't be the main goal in life. Sadly though, with humans that will probably always be the case.

March 1, 2013 at 9:28 am |

GFrederick

Very good TEDTalk on this subject. Very theoretical of course but scientists now postulate that there is a 'multiverse', a series of universes which populate an infinite expanse much like galaxies populate our universe. So even if our universe were to either collapse in on itself (Big Bounce) or expand to being incoherent (Big Freeze), there might be other universes which our galaxy would collide into (provided the Milky Way lasts that long). Interesting stuff.

March 1, 2013 at 9:41 am |

RKNY

A fun thought indeed, but over the billions of years it would take for the black holes to amalgamate, they would also, eventually, dissipate into the freeze via the Hawking radiation that does escape. Even if a few giant holes formed and evaporated or blew up, eventually only background radiation would exist in this universe, using current thought.

The only escape from that (if our descendants are alive in many billions of years) is to learn, through billions of years of scientific development, to create a new universe (or sustainable bubble within our own) to inhabit.

March 1, 2013 at 10:17 am |

Jon Price

I believe Carl Sagan made that point in Cosmos. There's still the question of how many times it's done that and what started the process.

March 1, 2013 at 10:24 am |

Frank

Could someone explain the example given in the article, ": ..., if you were standing near the event horizon – the point at which nothing can escape from a black hole – you would be turning around once every four minutes just to stand still."

March 1, 2013 at 6:42 am |

David C.

I agree, that explanation really explained nothing.

March 1, 2013 at 7:10 am |

Love Science Guy

I don't unerstand that explaination either, but my guess is that if you stand there you will be spinned to a complete circle in 4min.

March 1, 2013 at 7:29 am |

John

The force of black holes imparts a twist in space, so if you are occupying a point under such influence you would have to turn once every four minutes in order to remain motionless relevant to unaffected space.

March 1, 2013 at 7:32 am |

John

The force of black holes imparts a twist in space, so if you are occupying a point under such influence you would have to turn once every four minutes in order to remain motionless relevant to unaffected space. The relative time of 4 minutes in the example is relative to the spinning force that the particular black hole imparts.

March 1, 2013 at 7:33 am |

Masse

The spin relates to the curl of the field. Think of a river flowing, and in some locations, the water swirls. Or a storm, forming twisters. As space/ time moves, it also rotates, in the same way.

March 1, 2013 at 8:07 am |

charlie

At the event horizon you would be orbiting the black hole every four minutes. To keep facing the black hole you would have to rotate 360 degrees every 4 minutes. Considering how far the event horizon is from the black hole, you would be traveling very very fast, close to the speed of light.

March 1, 2013 at 10:24 am |

Edcode

You should teach

March 1, 2013 at 10:53 am |

Frank

still having hard time picturing this.....i don't see the connection of a 360 turn....i'm picturing standing at the end of a minute hand and staring at the center of a clock, the minute hand is turning at the speed of light...?

It gives me a goosebumps to know that Einstein is a jew and the Bible says the jews are the chosen people. Would it prove that the Bible was right after all. He is a genius because he is one of the chosen people? OK you will argue that Einstein don't believe in God... but that doesn't make him a Jew by not believing in God. Some Jews don't believe in God.

March 1, 2013 at 6:33 am |

mom

Google Einstein remarks on creation, a great designer, God, etc. I think you will find that he became more and more convinced of a "Great Someone" as he got older. He said in effect that nature shows so much astonishing order and complexity that there has to be a super-intelligence.

March 1, 2013 at 7:02 am |

Dan

That's a common interpretation, but don't let it, for one second, convince you that Einstein believed in anything remotely resembling a theistic God. Many of his writings have an atheist tone, some a pantheist or deist tone. Zero theistic thought.

March 1, 2013 at 8:08 am |

John

Being "chosen" is purely egocentric since the qualities of such selection were defined by Jews themselves.

So being chosen is simply a matter of whether your telling the story or being told.

Magical thinking remains pervasive.

March 1, 2013 at 7:17 am |

open your eyes

really OMG the bible is justs lies all of it is made up a fake a hoax what ever you want to call it an i find it really insulting that after I just read this great scientific achievement that you an a few more people think its the work of your god face the facts there is no god your priests have lied to you all religion is for the weak minded all religion is just power hungry people who are able to manipulate people to live by his rules an die in the next holy war in the name of there god...THEM heres some perfect exsamples to prove my point. the great crusade 1095, adolf hitler's holocaust 1933. or a more recent one the terrorist attack on the world trade center 2001. OPEN YOUR EYES

March 1, 2013 at 8:17 am |

Counter example

I can't believe I'm replying to your post, but I felt compelled. Some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century were committed in the name of atheism (or at least were not committed in the name of religion). First of all, the holocaust wasn't inspired by Christianity. There is nothing biblical about mass murder, so that is just a hate movement masquerading as a religious one. Second, here are examples of atrocities committed by atheistic governments: Soviet purges – 12-20 million dead, Chinese cultural revolution – 3 million or more dead, Cambodian genocide under Pol Pot – 1-3 million dead, Rawandan genocide – 1 million dead. The numbers are a little hazy, but you get the idea. I'm not saying that being atheistic causes you to commit mass murder, but let's not go around claiming that religion is the root of all atrocities. Christians have had their dark moments in history, just like everyone else. It's not being religious that causes people to kill, it's being human.

March 1, 2013 at 9:25 am |

counter-counter example

Sorry, you've setup a false correlation in your counter example.
Even if all of those governments were non-religious, that doesn't mean that their actions were a direct result of that. Ie: Correlation does not equal causation.

The leaders of those organizations were also all male, so, by your logic, it was because they were men that they killed all those people.

March 1, 2013 at 1:35 pm |

mbane

They were the choosen people at first. Than God changed his mind and sent down his son to personally choose a new group of people.

March 1, 2013 at 9:51 am |

irfan

Any sign of Voyager 6? And just how did the Enterprise avoid all these black holes while worping through space?

March 1, 2013 at 6:20 am |

Mr. Steve

worping?

your ignorance and belief in movies is astonishing.

thanks for the laugh

March 1, 2013 at 7:24 am |

Jared

Mr Steve: it was a joke, you p.rick

March 1, 2013 at 8:02 am |

Pat

I have a layman level question for one of the folks posting on here that actually know the physics here. A black hole is a way of describing the region of space around the singularity in the center from which light ca not escape because of the extreme curvature of spacetime. I understand that....but, if the singularity is, by definition, infinitely small, what is spinning? Please help. thanks.

March 1, 2013 at 6:18 am |

joe

The spinning comes from the matter getting sucked in. Its essentially a faster version of what our planets do, with a steeper fall to a greater mass taking up less room. Think of a drain or a whirlpool.

March 1, 2013 at 7:59 am |

nedo

I a ready for my theorem now.
Why the black hole is a black hole, where nothing escape throught it. Let me explain in layman terms so all can understand.
– As the surface rotates near the speed of light, of course whatever goes in will be devoured and nothing can be seen...
– I have to complete the intergral of diferential to a mass in respect with angular velocity which goes in and I will be ready to solve the problem

March 1, 2013 at 5:57 am |

bobo

Luckily, with a time contiunm spacecraft with a Flux capacitor would be able to go through the black hole.... fun!

March 1, 2013 at 9:57 am |

GO_GOP

Scientists talk about all the complicated stuff of the black hole moving at 84% speed of Einstein's speed of light, the black hole taking everything in and not letting light to escape (how crude is that? Light can never be held anywhere), the galaxy being 60 million light years away(and yet do not give us an idea of the distance in actual length like miles), the galaxy being spiral (but it does not spiral into the black hole like they said), blah blah blah. And not to mention we men came from monkeys and chimpanzees (but still the monkeys and chimpanzees exist today and they do not turn into humans.. not one instance). Yet the ignorant people choose to believe in science and ignore the Bible – the true word of our Lord in heaven. I find this funny but also feel sad for the lost souls of scientists and atheists.

March 1, 2013 at 3:26 am |

LOLS

You have to be a troll, there can't be a person alive this crazy...

March 1, 2013 at 3:39 am |

hawkechik

Or this stupid.

March 1, 2013 at 8:11 am |

Jay

you have got to be kidding me...if it helps you grasp how far 60 million light years is, which it wont at all- 1 light year is equal 5.87862537 x 10 to the 12th power miles. I'll let you go ahead and do the math if your really that interested in how many miles it is

March 1, 2013 at 3:51 am |

Lou

I think man's belief in God is far more wondrous and interesting than a spinning abyss.

March 1, 2013 at 7:45 am |

B

Indeed, Lou, "wondrous" as in: how could anyone be so stoopid!

March 1, 2013 at 1:40 pm |

USAtheist

You can roughly round off a light year to 7.7 trillion miles

March 1, 2013 at 2:21 pm |

Shane

Humanity did not spring from modern chips or monkeys.

We likely share the same ancestor.

March 1, 2013 at 4:07 am |

Bob Price

can you please explain, in simple terms, how we likely share the same ancestor. No guessing please.

March 1, 2013 at 4:13 am |

Reticuli

All life on this planet shares a common ancestor. It's just a matter of how far back and which ones, depending on the species. Chimps are distant cousins to us. And some of you should feel proud of that considering your own deficiencies. That you would be so lucky…

March 1, 2013 at 4:28 am |

Bob Price

oh I'm sorry, I guess I didn't make myself clear enough for you. Obviously my mistake, can you again, in factual terms, no guessing, no likely's, no most probably's no almosts, explain to me how we most likely have common ancestors??? I want solid, proven indisputable facts. no we could have, we should have, I want proven, direct positive proof that we are ancestors of that. I mean, if you can't give me that , just say so??? no harm, no foul, right? for a mind like yours, this should not be hard to do, right?

March 1, 2013 at 4:37 am |

Bob Price

OH and i'm sorry, but if you care to show that proof, I want all lines and genealogy, in sequence showing such proven linkage. ok??? easy for people like you?

March 1, 2013 at 4:40 am |

Erik

Its proven in the DNA. Our DNA is similar.

March 1, 2013 at 5:01 am |

Bob Price

and as we part, we get the same old garbage... no proof, no link and someone trying to goat the masses. ... well, you never answered and we aren't as dumb as you think we are???? you didn't answer because you can't. No man can. God has written what God has written. you will never "prove" God wrong. and you will never "prove" yourselves right. DO YOU KNOW WHY????? one word, ., . ,... ,,.., here it comes , .,. GOD. we walk by faith, not by sight. .... that is why.... you all go live your maybe's and your "most likely" and your "could have happened because" and we will live by what was written and has been proven to come to light. may god have mercy on your souls.

March 1, 2013 at 5:05 am |

caesarbc

Bob Price wants proof we are related to chimps...

the opposable thumb....

boooyahh.

March 1, 2013 at 5:05 am |

caesarbc

Bob... I want proof that God exists.
Because right now, in the world, it appears he is non-existent.

March 1, 2013 at 5:07 am |

Bob Price

I'm sorry, I just had to comment because I saw the 2 before me??? opposable thumbs??????that is your proof???? you linkage???? and the other one??? DNA that is similar????? are you freaking kidding me???? good night. when you find a real clue,,, send a msg.... and they call republicans dumb? wow.

March 1, 2013 at 5:12 am |

GodParticle

You are correct. Humanity evolved from a bag of beer nuts.

March 1, 2013 at 5:31 am |

nickgreen

Bob answer the question. Where is your proof? What I always love about the highly religious is that they will preach being open minded and understanding, but anyone who doesnt believe what they believe is an idiot and will be condemned

March 1, 2013 at 5:58 am |

Don't Worry

BOB,

you want prove on evolution? I want prove of your God. Prove that Bible wasn't written by us wanting to control the humanity and imprison simple minded people who's minds have been imprisoned by an imaginary being.

March 1, 2013 at 7:54 am |

NYer in London

Bob Price, you are a scary fella. Answer the question being asked of you. Prove to the readers, demonstrated with the same level of evidence you require of us, that God exists. You ignore the questions because you cannot provide the evidence.

March 1, 2013 at 10:13 am |

Jon Price

Guys, in the process of charting Bobs family tree, if you happen to find me in there, please omit it. (And if you find Dan Quayle, please omit him. I already know we are related.:-)~

March 1, 2013 at 10:16 am |

simplicity

God is most certainly the greatest scientist, simply put.

March 1, 2013 at 4:10 am |

Bob

There is no god, religion was invented to control the ignorant.

March 1, 2013 at 7:48 am |

Reason over Reason

If that is true, please ask him to explain evolution..:)

March 1, 2013 at 8:19 am |

ryanyomomma

This post gave me cancer. “The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”

March 1, 2013 at 4:23 am |

Reticuli

Provocateur. Not even a republican is that stupid. Very funny, though.

March 1, 2013 at 4:25 am |

Bob Price

UUUUMMMMM ,.,.,.,..,., still waiting???? nothing?

March 1, 2013 at 4:47 am |

Pat

Wow.

March 1, 2013 at 6:08 am |

JC

Spoken like a true Republican. You can trace our ancestry through our DNA, but you need to know a little science to follow the road map of our evolution there.

March 1, 2013 at 7:01 am |

Common Sense

Guys, come on now, the church said the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth, and anyone who says otherwise would be damned....if the books says its true, IT HAS TO BE!

March 1, 2013 at 7:01 am |

lexiington

really god did not say the world was flat that was a stupid decision by scientists years ago maybe you should start read more books you know like uuuuhhh THE BIBLE!!!!!!

March 1, 2013 at 8:58 am |

Enlightened

Darwin's theory of natural selection does not postulate that humans evolved from monkeys and chimps. It argues that primates (including monkeys, chimpanzees and humans) had a common ancestor, which is why monkeys and chimps don't turn into humans–they won't. Might be a good idea to actually know what you are talking about before you start writing the kind of idocy you posted here.

March 1, 2013 at 7:12 am |

david mann

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, and you want the distance of 60 MILLION LIGHT YEARS in miles?? Now that is really a stupid question if you actually think about it.

March 1, 2013 at 8:07 am |

Rbnlegnd101

I strongly suspect that he simply doesn't understand the words "light year". A light year is the distance light travels in a year. To describe that distance in miles, feet, inches, meters, yards, or leagues would involve a very large number, so large that it would be nonsense to the human mind, so,a larger unit of measure was developed, which allows for the use of a more comprehensible number. For proportion, a millionth (one over one million) of a light year is roughly 6 million miles. I still can't compare that to the distance to the grocery store, but at least the numbers sound like numbers I have heard before. People note the use of the word "year" in light year and get confused about it being a measure of distance rather than a measure of time.

March 1, 2013 at 10:20 am |

david mann

SHAME! Shame on those godless scientists using facts, logic and reason to explain things.

March 1, 2013 at 8:12 am |

heliocracy

Wow that's quite possibly the stupidest post I've ever seen.

March 1, 2013 at 9:19 am |

Sue Hutson

Go GOP is a perfect moniker.. regressive, backward thinking, close minded, a grouping kept alive by the ignorant masses....

March 1, 2013 at 10:06 am |

charlie

Look up theory in the dictionary. Theories are speculative plan based on observations and data. Many past theories have been disproved or amended as new data is collected. Many of the theories we believe today may be replaced with theories in the future. Theories are not absolute facts or laws of science.

March 1, 2013 at 10:34 am |

Mason Myatt

I have a great idea. Let's go interview survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and find out what they think about the Atomic THEORY. Like most people who are frightened by science, you confuse hypothesis and theory. Despite that, you actually make a good point. Science does change when the data indicate that a revision is needed. Religion, on the other hand, claims infallibility and so it has to deny all new learning, all new facts, all the discoveries that scientists have made. If you have your way, we who live in the 21st Century are supposed to base our lives of the mythology of a bunch of illiterate, nomadic sheep herders from about 5000 BCE. We would have no medicine, no electricity, no means of transportation other than camels and no learning or education. Yeah, that's the ticket to a wonderful future for humanity.

Light is energy, and energy can be contained. 1lightyear is 10 trillion kilometers, or the distance light travels in 1 Earth-year. So that black hole is 60 million x 10 trillion kilometers away. Galaxies do in fact spiral into super massive black holes in the center, it just happens very slowly, because they are very large, and we are insignificant specks in the universal scheme of things. Humans did not evolve from monkeys or chimpanzees. The great apes, I.e. humans, gorillas, orangatans, all evolved from a common ancestor. I feel sorry for the undevout, well we undevout feel sorry for the uneducated masses. Before you criticize science, learn a little science.

March 1, 2013 at 11:03 am |

USAtheist

WOW You ignorance is quite amusing, yet very scary.

If there was a "god" I'd pray for you... *cough

March 1, 2013 at 2:17 pm |

Naaaaaa

"the true word of our Lord in heaven" really? What type of pen did he use?
Do you think you have a foot hold in reality?

Your name is correct, the GOP is full of nut jobs!

March 1, 2013 at 6:02 pm |

DaveW

A wonderfully well-put-together article about a very fascinating and mysterious subject; punctuated by some frightened readers who seem to fear scientific discovery, worrying that their belief systems will be challenged. We live in a strange country.

The bible belt has been expanding for years while also growing hotter at its core. At the outer edges of the belt, denial spins at close to the need of fright. Far in the future, when the collection plates finally run out of fuel the belt will eventually collapse in on itself in an apocalyptic explosion, leaving a small dark spinning bible of nothingness. Of course, we will all be dead by then.

March 1, 2013 at 2:49 am |

Bob Price

You are absolutely correct, because the rapture will have occurred, the bibles will be spinning, and those left will be wondering how this could have ever happened to them. Look, the Bible was written many years ago. Man knows his destiny. if they would only listen. The Bible tells us that the world would end the same as Sodom and Gomorrah. It tells us how, and who. for all of you to continuously deny what has already taken place and what will continue to happen, is just as stupid as you telling me that the snake oil you're selling is as good . I love science, but it is guessing!!! You have proven events to look at, we have nothing but maybe, could have probably happened, , , , to look at.

March 1, 2013 at 3:03 am |

Jack

You are a complete idiot. The bible and its references to events that will take place has nothing to do with what is going on today. I could write a book today and be overly broad like the bible and it too would seem like predetermined destiny in 2000 years. Truth is, types like you are what is wrong with this world. Your "ultimate end time" mindset perpetuates our civilizations downfall.

March 1, 2013 at 3:34 am |

Bob Price

well then jack, be a hero, write that book, and IF we are as a civilization are around at that time, we will all laugh at me... and as overly broad as that book is... right?? OH and our downfall is written, that book you are going to write, will never be read. good luck.

March 1, 2013 at 3:40 am |

alinaw

The end of the world tribulation is not that broad as one might think. It deals with Israel and a 7 year peace treaty. It deals with worshiping a man who rules the world and claims to be God. It also deals whit the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem and the 2 witnesses that are killed near the end of the tribulation and their bodies are put up for display for 3 days. At the end of 3 days, the breath of life from God enters them and they stand to their feet and they go toward heaven. Just then, there is a massive earthquake. So there is a lot of specifics.

March 1, 2013 at 4:22 am |

Jimmy

Christianity: The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.

March 1, 2013 at 7:03 am |

Common Sense

I read a book called "Lord of the Rings" It talked about little people called Hobbits....I believe in Hobbits....

March 1, 2013 at 7:06 am |

Patrick

That's funny, I don't seem to remember the Rapture being part of scripture.

March 1, 2013 at 7:52 am |

BrettC

I love people like Bob here.....The blood line concerning the history of life on this planet has been written and is continually being updated as new species are found and cataloged. There have been hundreds...maybe thousands of scientific books written about evolution. These books are based on facts and actual observation.

The Bible was written to explain the un-explainable (at the time) to a mass of people who barely understood the wheel. The fact that you take the Bible literally is amazing to me. If it wasn't for science...the internet wouldn't have been invented and goof balls like yourself wouldn't have a forum to spew your BS to the world.

Please let the supposed rapture come soon to get these nuts off the planet so we can start a real society based on facts!

March 1, 2013 at 7:56 am |

Kirumaru

"The historical existence of Sodom and Gomorrah is still in dispute by archaeologists, as little archaeological evidence has ever been found in the regions where they were supposedly situated." You were saying about proof?

March 1, 2013 at 8:06 am |

D. K.

Rapture? No such word is to be found in the bible!

March 1, 2013 at 8:11 am |

James

@ Bob Price
The Rapture already happened. They left you, You were left behind with the rest of us "science belivers"!

March 1, 2013 at 8:40 am |

Edward

I am a religious person but by the way you respond makes christianity dumb and stupid. IF we look at the universe with all its greatness along with the theory of evolution that there would be a higher being that put this into motion. Science and religion correlates with each other if you read closely. The world was created in 7 days was the proof. If you want a scientific explanation the big bang says this. Im just amazed how you sound like a nutjob while not allowing yourself to grow which god told us to do. I believe he designed us to meet our fullest potential by searching for him using our intellect but its sad howwe most of us just relly on ourselves and no longer believe.

March 1, 2013 at 9:20 am |

heliocracy

Science is not "guessing." Religion is guessing. From your posts it's obvious to me that you don't know the first thing about any of the sciences, yet you're convinced they are wrong...you are in no position to make such a determination, since you know nothing about the subject.

March 1, 2013 at 9:24 am |

Sue Hutson

Bob and his ilk defend the bible as if it was actually written by their god. It may be an amazing piece of literature for its time, but it was penned by many men who contradicted each other.

March 1, 2013 at 10:17 am |

Edcode

Science guessing? An you punched that on a computer. No?

March 1, 2013 at 11:10 am |

Will Terman

I think there is something crucially missing in the article as reported. I understand a black hole to be an object totally described by its Kerr-Newman metric: 1) mass, 2) charge, and 3) angular momentum (see Kerr-Newman metric). All these values are conserved from the original imploding matter that created the black hole. At the central singularity, we would expect the spin rate to be infinite, although angular momentum would still be finite. This is anlagous to the mass of the singularity being finite, but its density being infinite. So when the author refers to "spin rate", I suspect she is instead referring to the orbital velocity of matter near the event horizon.

The rotation of the black hole decreases the radius of the event horizon and the frame-dragging of spacetime creates an ergosphere (shaped like an oblate spheroid) outside of it. So the measured velocities mentioned in the article are indicative of an event horizon that is closer to the singularity, and which thus has a higher orbital velocity associated with it. That would be evidence of black hole rotation.

The author's mention of spinning "once every four minutes just to stand still" is probably a reference to the frame-dragging, but that like much of the article is unclear, even granting that it is difficult to make any of this stuff very clear.

March 1, 2013 at 2:42 am |

Andrew

The paper covers all of that... although the linked version is paywalled. (As it should be, I don't want Landau linking an arXiv link to a Nature publication)

arxiv.org/abs/1302.7002

In case the abstract is insufficient.

March 1, 2013 at 2:47 am |

David C.

Thanks for that link to Archiv

March 1, 2013 at 7:39 am |

2LiveIsChr

Either Believing In God Is Of No Importance Or Of Greatest Importance. No Matter Which We Must Choose. Just Know If It Is True And If Jesus Is Real Which I Believed He Is That Someone You Didn't Think Existed Or Was Crazy Willingly Was Nailed To A Cross, Beaten, And Martyred So We Can Be Forgiven. We Disbelieve In Someone Who Would Spend Their Life Trying Make A Way For Us To LIve Forever. All That Crazy Man Talked About Was Loving One Another More Than Ourself Something Many Of Us Forgot It Shows By Our Amazing Divorce Rate. All He Preached Was Giving Up Our Pleasures And To Live By Love. The Judgement System God Uses To Forgive Us Of Our Trespasses Is So Perfect That Even When We Don't Deserve It He Set You Free. The Worst Thing Jesus Ever Preached Was To Give Up All Your So Called Valuable Possessions And Follow Him. But We Are Too Selfish And Think All Life Is About Is Pleasure. We Look For A Rational Explanation When The Evidence Is In Our Face. But Also Know That Just Because You Don't Believe In Him And You Can't Rationalize Him Does Not Mean God Is Not Real. It Is Like Saying I Don't Believe In Monster Trucks. I Will Still Get Ran Over.

March 1, 2013 at 2:33 am |

Bob Price

AMEN!!!!!! and we cant NOW prove anything written here, any more than man can now prove the existence, and death of HIM. EXCEPT to say that the existence and death of Jesus was written, and it was never written of this. so who do you believe?

March 1, 2013 at 2:41 am |

Andrew

And just becuse people believe in the Loch Ness Monster doesn't mean it's real.

I cannot prove god doesn't exist, but I can't prove unicorns don't exist. I have no reason whatsoever to believe in either. (And frankly, if pressed, I'd be more likely to believe in horned horses having existed than I am to believe in a god decribed by the bible.)

March 1, 2013 at 2:42 am |

2LiveIsChr

I Was Just Speaking My Mind No Need For An Argument Both Of Us Just End Up Looking Like Fools. But Irrelevant To This Lochness Monsters Do Exist JK And Unicorns Could Never Exist Because They Are The Dumbest This Every Made Up Now Pegasus' Are Awesome Because They Have Wings (Me And My Sister Debate About Which Is Better A Horse With A Stupid Horn Or Awesome Wings I Say Wings :D)

March 1, 2013 at 2:56 am |

Andrew

... I feel like I just read the naive ramblings of a 12 year old girl. *sigh*

March 1, 2013 at 3:05 am |

Bob Price

And you must believe in what you want to. but the bible has described already what will happen, and so far it has been accurate. I love science and learning about stars and black holes, but we will never know for certain. the bible was written. we know, this we don't. and to say that theory is fact, is misleading, because it is at it's very core, nothing more than a guess, that has not been proven wrong. WE STILL HAVE NO IDEA!!!

March 1, 2013 at 3:11 am |

2LiveIsChr

13 and 17 Year Old Girl Talk Come On Now You Don't Have Any Sisters

March 1, 2013 at 3:15 am |

heliocracy

What makes you think the Bible is true? We can't prove scientific principles, so they must be false, yet we can't disprove Biblical principles, so they must be true? That makes no sense whatsoever.

March 1, 2013 at 9:31 am |

Edcode

@Bob Price
The Qoran was also written. No?

March 1, 2013 at 11:20 am |

Andy Anderson

Black holes don't care about gods.

Ever wonder how many people you're driving away from Christ by being so obnoxious?
You'll have to answer for that eventually.

March 1, 2013 at 2:57 am |

2LiveIsChr

NO NEVER <3 LOL Thats A Knee Slapper

March 1, 2013 at 3:07 am |

2LiveIsChr

It Is Funny Though How Dr. Einstein Didn't Believe In God And He Saw The Bible As Childish But He Did Believe In Jesus As Being A Real Person I Think It Might Be Because He Could Not Prove God Existed Like Everything Else He Studied But Hey Its Just A Theory

March 1, 2013 at 3:35 am |

Me

It's so dumb to see either religious or anti-religious comments on this topic, since black holes have nothing to do with either religion or atheism.

It has more to do with God than science, since God created the universe and everything in it, including the black holes. Scientist just TRY to figure out how He created them, but refuse to acknowledge Him because they will never prove His existence because they are biased and blind to the evidence that Christians have been shown and scientists cannot comprehend.

Just like the cure for cancer has been around since God created the heavens and the Earth, but scientist do not see it because it's too simple for their minds to comprehend...and it's not profitable to the pharmaceutical companies.

March 1, 2013 at 4:57 am |

heliocracy

Science doesn't try to prove the existence of God because it follows evidence. There is no evidence for God to follow. If I claim that the universe was created by the mighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, is it rational for me to claim that science is biased because they refuse to investigate my claims?

That's exactly what I said. Scientist are BLIND to the evidence of God's existence. Those who believe and have accepted Jesus Christ see this evidence everyday. Those who do not see it choose not to see it. Science deals with the natural. God is super natural.

The closest to evidence that scientist (and all non-believers) will ever be able to see that God exists is the Bible. If non-believers made the HONEST effort to read and study the Bible (particularly Revelation), they would see that this 2,000 year old book has mentioned events that have taken place or are taking place today. Even the most successful fiction author today could not duplicate the Bibles accuracy. So, just saying the Bible is a piece of fiction written to convince people to follow a non-existent god is preposterous.

I come from a religious background that includes being a non-believer, an atheist, a pagan (witchcraft), and a Christian. I have been through all stages of belief. It wasn't until I became a pagan that I actually seen proof of God and satan. Then when I saw the proof of God's existence, I started the journey to become a Christian. It wasn't until I fully made the effort at becoming a Christian that I was able to see the abundance of evidence of God's existence.

The reason Christians can see this evidence that non-believers and atheist say doesn't exist because they cannot see it is because satan has blinded them. When a new Christian steps out in faith (the ability to believe even with the lack of evidence) the power of satan to blind them is broken. There are two types of non-believers, 1) those who are merely blinded by satan, and 2) those who choose to not accept God's existence because they choose a life of sin and disobedience. Most non-believers fall into the 1st type. I was both types at one point or another. Once I stepped out in faith, I was no longer blinded by satan and chose to give up my sin and disobedience. Therefore, I see the "evidence" of God's existence.

March 2, 2013 at 7:46 am |

lweba

In a black hole and even space close to it space and time are very much bent or curved. How then can you give measurements of size and velocity of a body in this region?

March 1, 2013 at 1:59 am |

Dan

The measurements are "as measured from our frame of reference" so to speak. Were you somehow able to consciously exist and move around inside the event horizon of a black hole, space, and the concept of measuring something like that, would be quite a mess from within.
Outside, at a distance, "looking" (term used loosely) at the mess itself, you can just view it as existing on a coordinate plane and describe where the event horizon seems to reside, start, and stop in three dimensions.

March 1, 2013 at 8:27 am |

Boxman

The universe is like a new woman that I'm taking out on a date. She's dark and she's massive and she has a black hole. And all of those elements I want to explore, just like you would explore on a new date. You want to dive deep into them and feel around and just see what's going to come out of that.

If you could put the universe into a tube, you'd end up with a very long tube, probably extending twice the size of the universe, because when you collapse the universe it expands and it would be uh... well you would want to put it into a tube.

March 1, 2013 at 1:31 am |

metoogsbbs

This is the greatest comment I have read in my entire life.

March 1, 2013 at 3:26 am |

Talok

Whats with all the super religious commenting about something that has NOTHING to do with this topic?

March 1, 2013 at 1:25 am |

docparadox

"god" works in mysterious ways *cough

March 1, 2013 at 1:39 am |

Kuba

LOL

March 1, 2013 at 2:09 am |

Edcode

LMAO

March 1, 2013 at 11:26 am |

jim fox

Twisting of space, becomes saggy and science called that Dark Matter or stretched saggy space. The dips and lines relax and matter gets trapped creating gravity pockets. young Scotsman found this out a few years back 3 stage black hole. looks like he was right.

March 1, 2013 at 1:13 am |

TheBob

Literally everything you've said is nonsensical. A troll, I presume?

March 1, 2013 at 1:26 am |

GO_GOP

I find this hilarious! Scientists (the we-know-all group) claim to know everything, but all they offer is something might have happened 60 million years ago, the light is just reaching us, the speed is 84% of Einstein's prediction blah blah. All based on a theory and as we all know, theory means the scientists themselves admit it cannot be proven. This is too funny. However, we also know the Bible has simple and trustworthy explanation of all that happened from creation to how man came about. You people choose to ignore all that and believe in the fiction (theory) that is science. I feel sorry for you

March 1, 2013 at 1:09 am |

JC

You should look up what theory means regarding science...hint: it's not synonymous with hypothesis.

Relativity and Gravity are "theories"

Maybe you should accept that many people, including many Christians, regard the bible as a book of morals and not a history book, seeing how many of the stories in said bible are way more outlandish and unbelievable than any black hole "theory" could ever be

March 1, 2013 at 1:20 am |

Carrie

Right on!

March 1, 2013 at 1:28 am |

docparadox

Amem! Eh Hmmm.....

March 1, 2013 at 1:34 am |

Bob Price

Ummm, What "people" do you talk about, that are Christian?

March 1, 2013 at 2:20 am |

Ryan

How about looking up what "theory" actually means to a scientist before you go spouting off about it? It doesn't mean what you think it means.

"A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of knowledge that has been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment."

It is not something scientists "can't prove" – in fact it's the closest thing science has to "proof". The reason it's called a "theory" is because scientists must always be open to new evidence (observable scientific evidence, not a 2000 year old book full of unsubstantiated and disproven claims about reality) altering their understanding.

March 1, 2013 at 1:22 am |

bazooka

close to, and actual proof isn't qite the same tho... no scientist has ever had proof about anything they cannot see or touch or hear... there is a book that has been written and is circulation today, but ppl fail to realize it,, we were created by a SUPER NATURAL being "GOD" he knows all and reveals some stuff as need to know.. but u ppl who who just have to live on what you can prove. Actually aren't living, because what have you proven? if its not in your presence or you haven't seen it or heard it or touched it?

March 1, 2013 at 2:21 am |

Bob Price

No, NO, NO,,,, theory is something that has been "ALMOST PROVEN",,,, almost proven because it has not yet been proved false. or as they say in science speak, cannot be proven false. but as we all know, science doesn't know!!!!!! They have theory, and as such, CANNOT BE PROVEN TRUE! AS FACT!!

March 1, 2013 at 2:25 am |

Bob Price

"closest thing science has to proof" aint good enough bub. I want "absolutely, positively, bet my daughters virginity on it" good!!!! and that was all explained in a book they call THE BIBLE> you go ahead and bet you younuns life on a maybe. I won't. no matter how you look at hypothesis and theory, it is still a maybe.

March 1, 2013 at 2:33 am |

Andrew

Well, yes, science typically requires the assumption of induction. Meaning that we assume something that we observed yesterday can be observed today.

If we abandon that assumption, then scientists really can't "prove" anything. We can't even prove that if you jump off a building, you won't go flying up to space.

HOWEVER, if you don't need absolute 100% certainty, I'd go with science each and every time. If you need 100% certainty, I'd suggest suicide, since you'll never be able to reach your standard.

If I had to bet my daughter's virginity on "gravity exists" versus "gravity does not exist", while I agree science doesn't have things 100%, can't prove things absolutly true.... I'm still going to certainly place my faith on the discipline with consistant replicable trials, than on some 2000 year old book written by now dead old men in the desert.

Cause while I can't say gravity exists with 100% certainty, I'm a LOT more certain gravity exists (hell, I'll go further and say "gravity exists as described in part by general relativity") than in the stories in your dusty old book.

March 1, 2013 at 2:39 am |

D. K.

Theory simply means "we think". How does that make a theory proof of anything? No argument here, just a sincere question,

March 1, 2013 at 8:35 am |

Andrew

"Scientists (the we-know-all group) claim to know everything,"

They do? Cause last I checked, if we knew everything, science would cease to be meaningful. I'm pretty sure it's the job of scientists to figure out that which we don't know. That means questions where scientists have studied we can probably trust their conclusions, but subjects scientists haven't studied, like the atmospheric composition of the third star on the first spine on Andromeda are currently unknown.

Scientists are only experts on subjects they have researched. They only seem to know everything because most questions you can think of, you'll find scientists have studied the subject already, and hence know more than you about that question.

That takes time and effort. You aren't willing to put that in, and hence, you just think scientists know all.

"All based on a theory and as we all know, theory means the scientists themselves admit it cannot be proven."

Yes, based on the kinds of theories that allow GPS satillites to work. You can actually measure gravitational redshift with a sufficiently well calibrated laser and a sufficiently tall building. You can therefore confirm many of the equations required to make these 'theories'. You could, if you really wanted, get your hands on a couple scintillator tubes, hook them up together, and start measuring muon flux in your scinitllators. You'd actually be able to determine how muon strikes there are on the ground and get a fairly decent measurement on the decay constant of the muon. (on the order of microseconds)

You could even then launch a balloon to the upper atmosphere and measure muon flux up there. Then you can see the same data that scientists back in the 1950s (I believe) had, where they could show that muons reaching earth were a lot more than you'd expect based on muon flux in the upper atmosphere. This is explained PERFECTLY if you correct for time dilation effects, which means you require these 'theories' to be accurate.

You can actually physically do these experiments. Hell, assuming you're willing to let the experiment run for a while, you could probably do it all for under 500 dollars.

All of that to determine if the 'theories' are accurate or not.

That requires a ton of work. It requires a ton of education. But if you're not willing to invest that kind of time, feel free to declare science as wrong 'just because'. Cause why study a subject when it's so much easier to just reject it entirely?

March 1, 2013 at 1:22 am |

Carrie

That's what you were taught in some right-wing religion. It isn't in the real world. Religious leaders are NOT scientists!

March 1, 2013 at 1:30 am |

docparadox

Bravo! Andrew

March 1, 2013 at 1:31 am |

Talok

People like you still exist? wow

March 1, 2013 at 1:22 am |

docparadox

Indeed they do, sadly.... GO GOP LOL and he's probably one of those that thinks dinosaur bones were planted by "God" to test our faith... I know at least 3 ppl like that. too funny, yet so sad

March 1, 2013 at 1:28 am |

Carrie

And that the earth is only 6,000 years old.

March 1, 2013 at 1:39 am |

docparadox

pipe down alice

March 1, 2013 at 1:24 am |

Jon

...and who do you know alive today that can prove the bible as we read it today is accurate and written by those we believe it to be written by? No more a theory than that of Einstein's. Religion is a joke created to control the masses. If you don't see that, than I feel sorry for you as you just another lamb in the heard of sheep.

March 1, 2013 at 1:25 am |

Carrie

I feel sorry for you for not opening your eyes to reality. The Bible also says a lot of things that most of us would not think of doing on moral grounds – Solomon and all his wives; King David had one of his generals killed in battle so that he could marry his wife; King David had many wives; Lot's two daughters had their father sleep with them because of the lack of available men; Jacob's first son slept with his father's concubine; and then there is all the killing that went on.

March 1, 2013 at 1:27 am |

Old Shoe

Abraham was a liar. Jacob was a deceiver. Moses and David were murderers and most of Israels' kings were depraved degenerates. God included the misery, the blood and gore of peoples lives as examples of His forgiveness, not examples of how to live. The Bible calls Solomon the wisest man to ever live, yet Solomon in Ecclesiastes called his own wisdom "vanity" compared to God and proclaimed his own life a vapor in comparison to God. The overall message of the Bible is forgiveness and redemption. How better to illustrate forgiveness than by showing exactly what God forgave? Right now this world is experiencing the longest period of "Silence" from God, since God sent his Son to this Earth. Why is this so? Is it because God is waiting to see what decision we make about His son?

March 1, 2013 at 9:23 am |

Rationalist

"Trustworthy"? According to the Bible, the world is flat. If assume you find that "trustworthy" and believe it, which makes you a m0r0n. If you don't believe it, it makes you a fu king hypocrite.

Your religion used to hold that the sun and the planets revolve around the earth. It used to burn people who said otherwise. Where exactly do you stand on that? What an idi0t.

March 1, 2013 at 1:36 am |

Can't call it.

I can't tell if you're trying to convince people that the GOP is full of ignorance with your choice in name, or if you're actually that dumb. Really can't call it.

March 1, 2013 at 1:36 am |

Rob

I feel sorry for you. Cause you and I are using something that was once a theory the Internet and of course electricity. Which was invented by man not quote a God unquote. Don't feel sorry for me and others like me. We really don't need it and truth be told if a man did die for my sins. Then I have nothing to worry about like the war is over. Black holes we know they are real.

March 1, 2013 at 1:37 am |

sarto

wheres the explanation of black holes in the bible?

March 1, 2013 at 1:55 am |

DJ

You're right on one assertion. Religion does offer a very simple explaination of the creation of the universe.
I personally find it a little too simple for my reasoning.

March 1, 2013 at 1:58 am |

glennrobert

GO_GOP: You must be a tea party type to be that stupid!

March 1, 2013 at 2:01 am |

Pat

I feel sorry for the GOP, Mr. GO_GOP. But, you do make for some entertaining reading.

March 1, 2013 at 6:15 am |

Alex Dumas

^Go GOP...who wrote the Bible, and when was it written?

March 1, 2013 at 6:53 am |

heliocracy

Scientists do not claim to know everything. That is entirely false. It's also very, very funny that you would call theories based on actual, observable evidence and repeatable experiments "fiction," while at the same time regarding a book of obvious fairy tales (which is full of propositions we know to be false) as truth.

March 1, 2013 at 9:38 am |

Edcode

@GO_GOP
"we also know the Bible has simple and trustworthy explanation of all that happened from creation to how man came about"
So we all came about from Adam and Eve. As distasteful as it may sound, some incest must have gone on at the dawn of humanity. Since the laws of God never change then incest must be, well, legal.

March 1, 2013 at 11:40 am |

tron

Your understanding and IQ is so low, it is impossible to see more than what a fairy tale book tells you. I feel sorry for you. With people like you and no science, the humanity would still be in the dark ages with stone tools. Next time when you or your kid is very sick, go to your priest, Rabi, imam etc to heal you. Don't go to a doctor who studied science !

March 4, 2013 at 1:29 am |

jac999

Wait!!! Here's a question for all those armchair astronomers and real experts alike out there:
Hypothetically, if there were a black hole that took 60 million years for the light from that galaxy to arrive to earth eyes, and if it happened to be making a beeline for the Milky Way all that time, and if it were... say... 15 million light years away by the time we saw the light from when it was 60 million light years away.... Does this mean we would now be seeing the same object... twice?

March 1, 2013 at 1:08 am |

Carrie

The black hole is mot moving closer to earth. We have no idea what it looks like in real time.

March 1, 2013 at 1:33 am |

Kevin in Atlanta

No, you wouldn't see it twice, however you would notice a doppler effect on the light waves. Just like a train blowing it's horn has a different pitch if it is moving towards you than it does if it's moving away from you, light acts the same way. If you are able to measure light waves, you'll notice that the light from that galaxy that was 60 million light years away would have a reddish hue as it moves towards you. If it were moving away from you, it'd be blue (you probably wouldn't be able to detect this with the naked eye, but certain telescopes and instruments can),

March 1, 2013 at 1:36 am |

Frumpy Flier Fillet

Other way around. Towards us is blue, away from us is red. The expanding universe means larger red-shifts for farther objects–hence the push towards better and better infrared instruments...there is so much red-shift at the long distances that we want to look that the light that gets to us is no longer visible to the narrow range of the human eye.

March 1, 2013 at 2:20 am |

liz

You have reds and blues switched.

March 1, 2013 at 2:24 am |

Andrew

I'm not sure I fully understand the question. It seems you're asking "what if the light is 60 million lightyears away, but the object only 15 million lightyears away", but that requires the object going faster than the speed of light.

I believe the question you meant to ask is more akin to "If the object is 60 million lightyears away, and moving near the speed of light towards us, is it possible that the object suddenly will appear out of nowhere?" to which the answer is a very soft "yes".

We actually have a perfect example of this, only it doesn't require a sun appearing out of nowhere. Instead, it requires looking at the most difficult particle we can observe, the neutrino. Neutrinos have such small cross sections that it literally takes giant underground bunkers filled with incredibly dense marterials just to record individual neutrino strikes. Thus the only real way we get to observe neutrinos are if there are a lot of them.

In our solar system one object produces a ton of neutrinos, the sun! Beta-decay after fusion in the sun produces a bunch of neutrinos (since beta decay is a weak force process). So we actually have a pretty solid idea of solar neutrino background, cause that's what we typically measure in neutrino labs.

However every now and then we get giant neutrino flux's. A bunch of extra neutrinos usually means something special, a "supernova" somewhere. So typically whenever neutrino labs get a giant flux, they immediatly alert observitories as to the direction of the neutrino flux, since usually a couple hours afterwards, we see the burst of light.

Why does this happen? Two reasons, because neutrinos travel at basically the speed of light, and second, because the release of neutrinos happens before the release of photons (Like I said, neutrinos have a very tiny cross section, so once they're produced, they pretty much continue on without being absorbed. Unlike photons, which in supernova are constantly absorbed and reemitted until they reach the end of the supernova and continue on forever. (That is, until we observe the phenomenon on earth).

In that sense, it means that if you create an object 50 million lightyears away, and then shoot it towards earth at the speed of light... the light may arrive at earth alerting us to this star only a couple years before the star itself wipes us out. (After we see the first flash of light from that star, we will be able to continue to measure the redshift of the star and so we would know exactly when it'll collide.)

Still, that's not likely a problem we'll ever face, but it is theoretically possible.

March 1, 2013 at 1:40 am |

Edcode

Intresting.

March 1, 2013 at 11:49 am |

Shane

Only if it were moving faster than the speed of light, which its not It's spinning at 84% of the speed of light.

We'd just get the doppler effect which would tell us that the object is approaching us rather than moving away from us. In your example, the object would have a blueshift, and if it were moving away from us it would have a redshift.

March 1, 2013 at 2:08 am |

Dave

To those here who actually know some cosmic physics: Has anyone ever floated the idea that the "extra" mass of the universe, usually attributed to "dark matter", is instead accounted for by a very large number of ancient and very massive black holes that have eaten up their accretion disks and so are undetectable? Just wondering...

March 1, 2013 at 12:54 am |

James Foley

I'm still wondering if the MOND formula can be applied to find that out.

March 1, 2013 at 1:01 am |

Ryan

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Hawking Radiation precludes this from being the case. Black holes essentially "evaporate" due to quantum fluctuations at the event horizon that allow some of the black hole's mass to escape.

March 1, 2013 at 1:15 am |

Carrie

Google it. I believe I saw an article recently that scientists have discovered the missing matter.

March 1, 2013 at 1:34 am |

Nick

As a student in astrophysics, I believe I am confident enough to answer your question. Black holes have been eliminated as possible criteria from being Dark Matter because:

Dark matter exists throughout galaxies; from their centers to the edges and beyond. Imagine if these were spread out black holes everywhere!

The types of super-massive stars that usually create black holes are not abundantly created enough to account for the total number of black holes needed to account for all this mass. For example, Andromeda (the next closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way) has an estimated amount of dark matter equal to normal, everyday matter.

Next, there are an estimated 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The super-massive black hole at our center has about 4 million times the mass of our Sun (which is pretty average for a star). We would need a lot of black holes to account for this mass, and black holes we know of are very rare compared to average stars.

Lastly, black holes bend light enormously. If they existed in between galaxies to account for the dark matter between galaxies, then the universe would look much different.

March 1, 2013 at 1:41 am |

Capone

NGC 1365 is 60 million light years away and we can see it.

Do you ever wonder if there is a planet in a solar system in NGC 1365 that has intelligent life, and that someone on that planet is looking through a telescope right now at the Milky Way galaxy wondering if there it contains life?

March 1, 2013 at 12:39 am |

whoizzit

Einstein was born 14 years after the civil war was over and figured out these mind boggling Mathematical equations and theories on a black board. Can anyone imagine what he would have come up with if he had been born a hundred years later, and had access to the super computers of today?

March 1, 2013 at 12:32 am |

kevin

Honey Boo Boo?

March 1, 2013 at 12:46 am |

Jeff

Kevin, you're such a disease.

March 1, 2013 at 1:00 am |

Major Tom

Actually, Einstein had a great deal of help with the advanced mathematics that forms the framework for General Relativity. Specifically from Riemann, Lobachevsky and Bolyai on non-Euclidian geometry. Euclidian geometry doesn't get you very far in General Relativity.

March 1, 2013 at 1:23 am |

Andrew

Hey hey hey!!! What about Tullio Levi-Civita? Actually most of Einstein's work was really reformulation built by physicists before him. Hell, if you're going as far back as Riemann, I'd like to throw a nod to Hamilton as well.

March 1, 2013 at 2:23 am |

black hoe

can eye ax you somethin?

March 1, 2013 at 12:29 am |

bettyboop33

thank you spammerhater and fearless freep for leaving me ROFL:)

March 1, 2013 at 12:25 am |

volsocal

Funny that Albert Einstein is mentioned in the headline on the main CNN page, but not in the article.

March 1, 2013 at 12:14 am |

pockets

You mean like, that god didn't make them to kinda, you know, draw us all into it, like.

March 1, 2013 at 12:19 am |

Sam

It's funny how you didn't read the entire article before you posted lol. You didn't even ready the top portion. if you did you would ahve seen this section
"Astronomers found that the spin is at least 84% of the maximum value allowed by Einstein's general theory of relativity. In other words: Einstein was right, again."
Now if you expected to see his name a million times lol then you are right lol. It wasn't about Him it was about the Blackhole!!!! :)

March 1, 2013 at 12:28 am |

Epic Fail

OK, you suffer from a failure of reading comprehension "Astronomers found that the spin is at least 84% of the maximum value allowed by Einstein's general theory of relativity. In other words: Einstein was right, again."

Now THAT's how you create buzz for a new blog. Remember, folks, that's calnewlanministries.com. Langkard, I expect you to "follow" my blog.

March 1, 2013 at 12:02 am |

virginia

this looks a lot like the spin on the males back of their heads sometimes you can find two of this hairspins when the dude has a temper...most babies are born with this spin mark on their heads almost alway one disappears by the age of 3 or so some keep two for ever...

the onther picture that looks like an angels or a human is the magnetic field protecting the earth it shapes a human head or what appears to be un angel...jsut saying - this black holes look alot like a twister created by winds and other forces...the twister here on earth do also desintegrat what ever fall into the meidle of it...

February 28, 2013 at 11:42 pm |

Larry

Back to the kitchen you go. Now.

February 28, 2013 at 11:48 pm |

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

You know I feel so sorry for the atheists! They think they are so rational, smart and strong. Let me tell you something there is nothing rational about denying the power of God. They may have eyes but you can’t see, you may have ears but you can’t hear and certainly your hearts have hardened over the years more than stones and even from stones water can flow, at least that’s how it made it to earth in the first place. Don’t forget from what you have been made? Don’t forget that you were dead then you were brought to life and just like that you will be again? God put things in motion; he is the creator and the shaper and is capable of reverse engineering your sorry behind. No wonder the first verse in the Quran was “Read”.

February 28, 2013 at 11:39 pm |

John

There is no god. Period. And Muhammad was a pedophile.

February 28, 2013 at 11:43 pm |

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

Mohammad was a feminist even in the 21 century standards. He gave woman the right to vote, inherit and fight 1400 years before America did. His first wife was a business woman 15 years older than him.

February 28, 2013 at 11:46 pm |

Keith

Shut up weirdo.

February 28, 2013 at 11:45 pm |

Andrew

Personally I vastly prefer the line "there is no god, and Paul Dirac his his prophet." Incidentally, I'm also pretty sure I'd actually take Paul Dirac as a prophet well before I take Muhammad.

That's more a statement of my priorities though. I guess Dirac was an idiot for rejecting god. Perhaps Feynman was too. But still, in an article about increasing our knowledge of physics... I'm going to side with the physicists over the theologians.

February 28, 2013 at 11:56 pm |

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

Science is a great thing to acquire. Many scientists believe in God too. There is no contradiction between science and Islam. I can tell you the Quran mentioned many scientific facts 1400 years before they were discovered. Yes it's not a science book. Imagine the bedouins in the Arabian desert reading E = MC square and expect them to believe. Good luck with that! The Quran miracle lies in its ever expanding meaning of the same words! Tell me rationally what are the odds, to have a chapter called Iron in the Koran that talks how iron descended to earth (that's the death mark of a supernova as you know) and it happens that the verse number is Fe atomic number and the chapter number is Fe atomic weight mass. You could say it can happen? I think it’s one in a trillion chance but let’s say I give you that. When you look at other verses that talk about the creation of the universe, the big bang theory, the embryos development, the space fabric piercing stars, and many many others you can’t help but to reach one conclusion that this book is divine.

March 1, 2013 at 12:14 am |

pockets

We are not long out of the cave as evidenced by some of the posts in here....

March 1, 2013 at 12:22 am |

Smokey

What about Schroedinger? What about Oppenheimer? What about all the other physicists who were/are believers in the divine? It does not take a genius to recognize that modern physics and cosmology are getting closer and closer to describing what the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavadgita described millenia ago. Science is slowly crawling towards the point that religion reached long ago...but science, with its rigorous standards of proof, will not leave any room for deniability. When science proves the existence of God – and it will not be all that long before this happens – you will all look like shortsighted fools.

March 1, 2013 at 12:37 am |

Andrew

I really wish people without a physics education would stop talking about E=mc^2. Hell, I'm annoyed with that equation period. It's useless. It tells me almost nothing interesting because it assumes we're looking at a massive object at rest. In other words, it doesn't take advantage of what relativity is supposed to be entirely about.

See giving the bedouins E=mc^2 would be uninteresting. They SHOULDN'T believe that. But, if I were a god, I certainly would have given them that "light travels at a constant speed". We already had enough geometry back during even ancient greek times to literally be able to derive most of special relativity with that one proposition alone.

However that proposition required maxwell's equations. I can understand not giving bedouins Maxwell's equations explicitly written out, however perhaps some hints might have been appropriate. Maybe start by at least giving us an understanding of electricity being a 'flow', cause that idea didn't take hold until the 1500s-1600s. The idea that static shocks are caused by 'excess' and 'deficiency' in some concept (charge) was fundamental to advancing physics and electrodynamics.

So 1500 years after god's second book before we get to learn one of the most fundamental aspects of our universe? And I'm supposed to be impressed by the knowledge in these books? Hell, I'd be more impressed your iron comparison if the Quran had mentioned anything about energy density. (Which is in particular what makes iron so interesting. You don't need a supernova for iron, but you need a supernova for everything above iron. It's the fission/fusion energy gain divide. Guess the Quran couldn't be all that special for teaching you about how iron is special if you don't actually know why iron is such an impressive element)

I'm still going to say Paul Dirac and Richard Feynman kick the pants off Mohammud.

March 1, 2013 at 1:53 am |

Andrew

Smokey, I have no problem with them. In fact if you're a fan of your physicists, you might have recognized that line. It was Pauli talking to Dirac who said "there is no god, and Dirac is his prophet". Pauli was a notable catholic.

There's also Lamatre who famously was also a catholic who indepdenatly derived the Friedman equations. (Slightly after Friedman did). There were plenty of religious scientists, but that's not what I was responding to.

"let me tell you something there is nothing rational about denying the power of God."

Yes, there existed religious physicists. But there have existed plenty of totally rational atheist physicists as well. And in terms of their discussions on philosophy, I have always preferred Feynman's brand of caustic anti-philosophic reductionism to Einstein's need for a perfectly ordered universe to fit his own concept of "God". After all, Einstein's biggest mistake was probably saying "god does not play dice with the universe". He may not have liked quantum physics, but it was real nonetheless.

March 1, 2013 at 2:17 am |

Brian

WHAt you are so far into left field my man.

March 1, 2013 at 12:09 am |

Homer10

Who the "F" cares?

March 1, 2013 at 12:33 am |

Mickey1313

All thiests, without exception, are ignorant fools. And mohamad was a christian pedophile rap eist.

March 1, 2013 at 12:43 am |

glennrobert

There is a God? There is no God? Neither concept is testable. So I am agnostic.

March 1, 2013 at 2:16 am |

heliocracy

So let me tell you about the Flying Spaghetti Monster...

March 1, 2013 at 9:44 am |

Shane

I've read the Bible, I've read the Koran,

I believe they are some good stories, some of them have some decent moral values, but there is no evidence of a creator inside those books.

And parts of the Bible and Koran have already been disproven. One of the biggest parts of both books, the Exodus likely never took place because there is no evidence in Egypt or on the route the Jews were supposed to have taken during the Exodus of their existence.

Then we have Noah's flood, again while there is evidence of local floods, there is no credible evidence of a global flood. Believe what you want, I'm not going to tell you not to, but do not insult us just because we require evidence for our beliefs instead of blind faith.

March 1, 2013 at 2:19 am |

JC

There is no evidence because Raj took them through the Stargate, and the USAF has hidden it inside Cheyenne Mountain.

hmmmm...well you don't have to have a degree in physics or be a rocket scientist to understand that you sir are a BIGOT. I can give you an Amen if you would please just open up YOUR wee little mind. In the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who described bigotry in the following quotation: "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract." Boop Boop Dee Doop!

March 1, 2013 at 12:20 am |

Sam

NO Amen here. If the Republicans stop making a big issue out of allowing gays to live their lives instead of trying to tell them how to live their lives, then Obama wouldn't have to protect their rights. Obama is protecting the Gays HUMAN and AMERICAN rights that people like you want to take them away but you cry like a baby when they want to take your right to own a gun. No I am not gay, I am married and have a son. I am far from being GAY. I just believe in equal rights to everyone. Obama is not the cause of spending money, it's the GOP that cause of why Obama have to spend money to defend Gay rights!! Maybe you need to reach down in your your heart and think about this...

March 1, 2013 at 12:37 am |

b4bigbang

God's chosen people, the Jews, have revealed God to us by the Scriptures, and they're also revealing the Cosmos, as well as other areas of knowledge.
Einstein is a star in a great constellation.

February 28, 2013 at 11:30 pm |

cocteautwin

why do I long to be part of that more than I love life itself? strange.

February 28, 2013 at 11:24 pm |

krozar

Wow, Sagittarius A* is getting clearer and clearer with this new technology and telescopes. I need to read up on my astronomy.

February 28, 2013 at 11:23 pm |

H

Great Scott! Can you even imagine two Black Holes merging into one?

February 28, 2013 at 11:14 pm |

Langkard

Even more fun is imagining what happens when the Schwartzchild radii merge and how their combined spin as they orbited each other in an ever-smaller spiral would affect space-time around them.

February 28, 2013 at 11:18 pm |

Andrew

It's thinking about this that makes it so hard for me to picture two black holes merging together. I can't imagine how we'd be able to picture the two event horizons colliding, since each description has an observer's frame stop when something hits the event horizon.

So what the hell happens when two collide? Do we never see another actually enter the event horizon? Or should I just be thankful that the lack of angular resolution makes it very difficult to ever answer that question?

February 28, 2013 at 11:39 pm |

Nick

They generate what are called "gravitational waves." Things so crazy and complex my astrophysics teachers never expected us to do the math on them. There is, though, a very thorough wikipedia article on them, though.

March 1, 2013 at 1:51 am |

tarura

Wait a minute ! Just a minute, please !

If this black hole is 60 mln lightyears away, that means the light was traveling to us for the past 60 mln years.
We are now seeing what was happening there 60 mln years ago

And since this black hole is moving with the speed near to the speed of light, it could be very near by now.
Just around the corner. Scary stuff.

February 28, 2013 at 11:10 pm |

Pat

Spinning at near the speed of light not moving linearly at that speed

February 28, 2013 at 11:13 pm |

Langkard

It is rotating at around 84% of the speed of light. It's motion relative to use is different. Since most galaxies are moving away from each other as the universe expands it is likely to be moving away from us.

February 28, 2013 at 11:15 pm |

jim atmad

The surface is rotating at nearly the speed of light.

The center of the black hole's mass (the center of galaxy NGC 1365) is moving consistent with the universe's overall expansion, not racing toward us.

February 28, 2013 at 11:19 pm |

Fnordz

No... it's SPINNING at that speed, not travelling through space at that speed. Big difference.

February 28, 2013 at 11:21 pm |

MisterSnow

even if it were moving toward us at 84% of light, we'd still have about 9.6 million years to go.

February 28, 2013 at 11:29 pm |

Larry

Which is to say pretty fu king soon. RUN!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

February 28, 2013 at 11:51 pm |

jac999

Wait!!! Hypothetically, if there were a black hole that took 60 million years for the light from that galaxy to arrive to earth eyes, and if it happened to be making a beeline for the Milky Way all that time, and if it were... say... 15 million light years away by the time we saw the light from when it was 60 million light years away.... Does this mean we would now be seeing the same object... twice?

March 1, 2013 at 12:58 am |

Shane

Spinning near the speed of light.

And we can use the doppler effect to determine if the black hole was moving towards or away from us. And if I'm not mistaken, that galaxy is moving away from us therefore it is no danger.

March 1, 2013 at 2:21 am |

elwood

Sigh. Yet another CNN science post lacking accuracy.

Unlike what the article states:"We still don't know how black holes came to be in the first place..."
we know quite well how black holes form.
They form from the deaths of rare high mass stars.
There are several in our own galaxy: Cygnus X-1 and
the supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy
are amongst the most well known.
I'd suggest a little refresher course in intro Astronomy 100 before you attempt to write another
astronomy article.
Or even 5 minutes spent using Google.
Try out this web site:
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/

February 28, 2013 at 11:05 pm |

SB

You're half right. Stellar-mass black holes like Cygnus X-1 are the crushed cores of massive stars that collapse on themselves and then explode at the end of their lives. But we don't yet have a clear picture of how the supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies formed. The short version is similar; lots of mass compacted into relatively little space. But there's far too much mass in such a black hole to have been the core of any star, and it's not yet perfectly clear where/when the formation of the first generation of stars and the formation of the supermassive black holes overlap.

February 28, 2013 at 11:16 pm |

TheBob

Elizabeth Landau writes many of CNN's "science" articles. One thing that is consistent across all her articles is the major errors and the flat out wrong statements.

February 28, 2013 at 11:23 pm |

Langkard

Sadly, you are correct. She has a tendency to gloss over or entirely ignore salient facts. This isn't the first time that she has distorted quotes from articles in the journal Nature. The best course of action is to read the actual articles in the original sources when she links to them, as she did above, and skip the rest of her article. If the original source article isn't available (such as only on a premium/pay site), looking for other sources other than her is usually a good idea.

February 28, 2013 at 11:34 pm |

Andrew

She comes from a journalism background, not a science background, and especially not a physics background, so I tend to forgive her for glossed over details, I'm usually satisfied that she links to the actual peer reviewed paper.

That's not really meant to be a slam against Elizabeth, that's more a reflection of science reporting in popular media in general. It's frequent you have scientific studies reported in the popular press by people with no scientific background, and incredibly rare to see papers reported by people with specific expertise in the subject being reported.

If you're looking for that, you should be sticking to just Nature, Science, any of the APSs, etc. Phys. Rev. X is actually pretty cool.

February 28, 2013 at 11:52 pm |

Nick

You should note that she's actually quoting an astronomer (kinda).

But, regardless, she is right for super-massive black holes. We know how regular black holes are created, but the formation of such super-massive black holes is actually very hard to account for.

In black hole astrophysics, there is something called the Eddington Limit. The equations show that our ~4 million solar mass super massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way is too large to have gained all its mass since the formation of the galaxy with the rate at which it can consume mass. There must have been some strange beginning or happening during its life that allowed it to form or get so massive that our science has not yet determined.

March 2, 2013 at 4:12 am |

dan

there is a black hole right here in the US!!!!!! its in the white house!!!!!

February 28, 2013 at 11:04 pm |

JamesFoley

Impossible,your mom's never been to the white house

February 28, 2013 at 11:09 pm |

BigAl

I don't understand Harrison's illustration, "...you would be turning around once every four minutes just to stand still."
Can somebody say that in a better way?

February 28, 2013 at 11:04 pm |

Langkard

The author of the article apparently left out the part about standing at one of the poles of the rotation. Thus, turning around every 4 minutes just to keep facing the same direction away from the black hole. Unless the person explaining it meant something entirely different and the author just failed completely.

February 28, 2013 at 11:11 pm |

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

Now If I say the Quran 1400 years ago talked about black holes, supernovas, space fabric piercing starts, iron element atomic weight and mass and refer to the verses many people will take that with a grain of salt (maybe a bag of salt). But I stumbled on a rare clip for Stephen Hawking (an atheist) saying the following "Allah Akbar, Ashhado an la elaha ella allah, wa anna mohammad rasoolo allah" which means “God is greater, I bear witness there is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger” ? ya, it's just a fabricated clip you would think. But before ALS completely took over Stephen’s ability to talk, he used to say exactly that over and over again as if Allah wanted it to be a sign. Google "Stephen Hawking Videos: When Hawking Was Talking " and hear it for yourself. The ironic part the translator translated it completely different, it was way easier to hear what I said above even for someone who knows nothing about Arabic than what the translator said. How is that a proof of God!

Muhammad WAS gay. Lying about it certainly wouldn't be Christian. (Checking me out on the web, huh, Langturd? Creepy.)

February 28, 2013 at 11:18 pm |

Langkard

I was looking for other instances besides yours of the misuse of the non-word empirico-positivism and happened upon the only such misuse – yours, at the Cal Newlan Ministries website. Trust me when I say I didn't bother looking at your website. Your posts here and the evidence in the Google summation is more than enough to make me wish that retroactive abortion was legal.

Where does one go to get drugs that can make someone as delusional as this guy?

February 28, 2013 at 10:40 pm |

dike

That drug my friend is being a fanatic Muslim. Which will make you think like this and do atrocious in humane things. Only cure is to send these people to the black hole.. That is described in the last page of Quran.

February 28, 2013 at 10:51 pm |

Langkard

Actually, I find all religions to be just as fanatical. Christianity is no different from Islam when it comes to fanaticism and delusion. Consider the so-called witches burned at the stake, the Jews exterminated in pogroms long before the Holocaust, native tribes dismantled in North America and Australia so their children could be sent to "proper" Christian school, and many more. Religious belief breeds delusional fanaticism.

February 28, 2013 at 10:59 pm |

There is no god but the only God and his last messanger is Muhammad

You know I feel so sorry for the atheists! They think they are so rational, smart and strong. Let me tell you something there is nothing rational about denying the power of God. They may have eyes but you can’t see, you may have ears but you can’t hear and certainly your hearts have hardened over the years more than stones and even from stones water can flow, at least that’s how it made it to earth in the first place. Don’t forget from what you have been made? Don’t forget that you were dead then you were brought to life and just like that you will be again? God put things in motion; he is the creator and the shaper and is capable of reverse engineering your sorry behind. No wonder the first verse in the Quran was “Read”.

February 28, 2013 at 11:38 pm |

Samson

It is not drugs. This is more of a case of being born with a serious brain defect.

March 1, 2013 at 12:11 am |

BigAl

Is there a coherent thought in there, somewhere?
I can't tell if you are pro-religion, pro-atheist, pro-christion, pro-islam or just high.

February 28, 2013 at 10:58 pm |

TheBob

There is no god. Period. And Muhammad was a pedophile.

February 28, 2013 at 11:19 pm |

cynthia

Evolution is the only messenger of G-d. There is no voice but the voice of Evolution. Agile, adaptive, spontaneous, continuously and iteratively self-improving, self-organizing, self-sustaining, self-inducing, self-learning percolating the survival of the fittest. G-d is the scrum master of the universe. And the Holy Sabbath is the only path of salvation in this dog-eat-dog universe – the Kanban regulator, ensuring the rest points necessary for process synchronization and flow optimization. Where Evolution is the Gevurah and the holy Sabbath the Chesed of the Sephirot.

February 28, 2013 at 11:40 pm |

Dan

Don't ya just love it when they guesstimate stuff like they do. We're you there then or now? You look at a black hole 60 light years away, take some measurements, and say that some weird stuff happened 5 billion years ago like you saw it or something. Man, I wish I could be that sure of something. I do know a guy who lives under a bridge who says stuff like that.

February 28, 2013 at 10:24 pm |

JamesFoley

Actually Dan,if you were familiar with things like mathematics, trigonometry, and the half life of certain elements, you wouldn't be so ignorant or flippant of the findings. :) Glad I could clear that up for ya ;)

February 28, 2013 at 10:31 pm |

TheBob

Likely a troll. Nobody is that stupid.

February 28, 2013 at 10:36 pm |

JamesFoley

True, but you'd be shocked to know just how many people actually agree with these trolls

February 28, 2013 at 10:40 pm |

Bostontola

Getting these theories and models correct is what makes things like GPS work accurately over a long time. Do you really think that your lack of understanding should be respected?

February 28, 2013 at 10:35 pm |

Paul

If you spend your life meticulously studying and taking measurements and discussing with colleges and being shown wrong and revising your hypothesis and retesting and experiments and sharing your data and repeating over and over and over again, then you, too, would be able to say with some certainty something about a black hole across the universe.

Or, you can throw stones on the internet, and pretend your as smart as a dedicated astrophysicist.

Either way, I guess.

February 28, 2013 at 10:37 pm |

M

Just because you are not smart enough to learn how to do the things they talk about in the article doesn't mean that other people are as dumb as you.

February 28, 2013 at 10:37 pm |

JamesFoley

wow,that reminded me of How to Train your Dragon..."Why do we have to learn about stuff? Why can't we just go kill the stuff the books tell us about?" ~Snotlout

February 28, 2013 at 10:48 pm |

Langkard

You displayed your ignorance quite clearly in the post. If something is 60 million light years from away, then the things observed happening there took place 60 million years ago. The fact that you don't know this explains why you don't get anything in the article.

February 28, 2013 at 10:42 pm |

AnonymousRex

You do realize the same measurements and understanding that allow physicists to understand how these black holes evolve over billions of year are what allows the GPS in your car to work as well as it does.

You should be ashamed of your ignorance, not proud of it.

February 28, 2013 at 11:04 pm |

Fnordz

There are no supermassive black holes 60 light years away. The closest one is at the center of our galaxy- 25,000 light years away. You're off by a factor of greater than 400.

February 28, 2013 at 11:27 pm |

Andrew

"Off by a factor of 400".

I take it you're an engineer, and not an astronomer? (An astronomer would be content saying just 'two orders of magnitude off'. I only know engineers who would give constraints as tight as a factor of 400. :P )

March 1, 2013 at 12:00 am |

cynthia

In semiconductors, my employers required us to make and record guesses. We have the academic theoretical guessing model but our applied-guessing model horrendously off the precision of the theoretical one. Sometimes I keep wondering when certain religious people say we should not trust in scientific theories because they are mere "theories".

But they do not realise that the computers and machines they use, and on which their survival and livelihood depends, are built on bulwarks of "theories". And if they do not trust "theories" how could these esteemed fellow-humans unconscionably and recklessly trust those modern machines built by people like us who use "theories" to guess to achieve their proper functioning.

February 28, 2013 at 11:55 pm |

tony

Excuse me stewardess, what exactly is a tad?

February 28, 2013 at 10:12 pm |

Major Tom

Airplane F T W !

February 28, 2013 at 10:18 pm |

ironman59

First of all keep the religion/gawd carp out of the disucssion. This is a science story, not philosophy. What is most amazing isn't want the scientists confirmed rather that Einstein did all of this nearly 100 years ago. Without computers, without space telescopes, without a lot of sophisticated equipment. Yes, he was way wrong on a number of things but with each validation like this it is amazing how brilliant he actually was for his time or any time.

No, you're entirely incorrect. Go look it up. "Empirico" doesn't exist, except in your own mind. If you Google "Empirico-positivism" only one example occurs. It is rather sad that the sole example of that usage occurs on a website called "Cal Newlan" Ministries, isn't it? At least you're quite blatant in your ignorance. I applaud your willingness to display your cluelessness in public; in much the same way as I would applaud a mentally handicapped person finally managing to get 1+1 = 3 after much study. It's truly heart-warming.

Poor, ignorant Langkard. Look up "Philosophy of Science" and do some reading. You wouldn't know positivism from positive thinking.

February 28, 2013 at 11:11 pm |

Langkard

Positivism is a correct usage. Empirico-positivism is not even a word. Empirical positivism is a type of positivism, though. I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and just assume that you meant empirical, but you have entrenched yourself with it and misused the non-word previous to this. If you wish to discuss logical empiricism and positivism and the roots of the philosophy of science, then the least you can do is use words which actually exist. Making them up as you go along is not helpful, but also not entirely unexpected from a religious fanatic.

February 28, 2013 at 11:28 pm |

James Foley

Actually, Emperical positivism would be a philosophy that incorporates science into it's structure, but Emperical positivism isnt' the equivalent of science. A simple google search could clear that lil ignorance up for you :)

February 28, 2013 at 11:31 pm |

Langkard

It's a lost cause. This Cal Newlan twit is way deep into pro-Christian, anti-science delusion. His misunderstanding of science is obvious, but so is his misunderstanding of philosophy. As the great Richard Feynman said it, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

February 28, 2013 at 11:39 pm |

hhh

you are wrong because religion is right !! Praise the lord alleluia brother!! ;)0

February 28, 2013 at 10:33 pm |

JamesFoley

Actually science is NOT a philosophy. Science is the study of...philosophy is the speculation of along a set line of preferences

No one said science is "a philosophy," only that it is philosophical. You don't suppose that the University of Minn. Studies in the Philosophy of Science is just a big waste of time do you?

February 28, 2013 at 10:53 pm |

James Foley

Science is NOT philosophical. Scientists can be however.

February 28, 2013 at 11:35 pm |

swirilling vortex of entropy

Perhaps they are dynamos of creation\destruction, anchors to masses, and governors of galaxies.

February 28, 2013 at 9:57 pm |

todd

I don't see what studying black holes has anything to do with us. If those screw balls want more money for their research, they can go take a mop and mop some floors at night, pool all the money together and do it. Its waste of time and money to give them anything. None of that stuff will ever help us eat. They are talking like priests about religion. Same thing. God this god that, Black hole this black hole that. Not like we will ever see one, or be next to one.

February 28, 2013 at 10:10 pm |

TheBob

People like you should be cared for the way mushrooms are: kept in the dark and fed cow manure. It's a shame thought that your contribution to humanity doesn't reach that of mushrooms. But it may be something you can aspire to. Try to be as useful as a mushroom.

February 28, 2013 at 10:16 pm |

bmurdoc

You sir, are a waste of time

February 28, 2013 at 10:17 pm |

Fr33th1nk3r

You are a moron.

Pure research has lead to most of the innovations you use and take for granted on a daily basis. Studying the awesome forces that power blackholes and the cosmos around us gives us a better understanding of the nature of the universe, which in turn leads to game-changing scientific innovations.

Do you think they were actually looking to invent the cellphone? No, it is an innovation based on research and lessons learned while investigating other lines of technology.

February 28, 2013 at 10:18 pm |

Mark Shadows

Are you kidding me? The possibilities of technological advancements, of the safety of our imminent galaxy, all can be derived from studying those black holes. Think of how energy is released after absorbing any matter, whatsoever. Maybe it will help us find a new way to get the shallow minded off of burning dinosaur poop.

February 28, 2013 at 10:24 pm |

arduino

That's a pretty ignorant view point. We don't need anything but food and water to survive. To have a civilized and advanced society, we need science and discovery. The moment we stop funding exploration and knowledge advancement, is the moment we will relapse into a 2nd and 3rd world country. Just because you are ignorant of the sciences does not mean they are not important and fundamental to society.
Studying black holes does impact us. To put it simply, if we understand what happens inside a black hole, we will find a unifying theory of everything. This would have huge implications for human advancement. It may take a while to implement this new knowledge for its benefits to reach the general populous, but then again, what major discoveries don't?

February 28, 2013 at 10:34 pm |

Data

The reason you have a computer to type on is because some people looked up at the sky in wonder and asked the question "why?". Computers work based on the principles of quantum mechanics, a priceless piece of empirical wonder discovered by people who simply wanted to peak behind the cosmic curtains. That being said, I would gladly relinquish some of my tax dollars to learn more about the universe we live in, regardless of the terrestrial implications.

February 28, 2013 at 10:41 pm |

Charles

Somebody had to invent that time machine that brought you from the dark ages.

February 28, 2013 at 10:42 pm |

Timetraveler

Uh, no. There are no "governors of galaxies". Just galaxies.

February 28, 2013 at 10:10 pm |

Crocker

How do we even know it is still in existence since it takes 60 million light years for the light to reach us? It could be long gone and we won't know about it for millions of years.

February 28, 2013 at 9:54 pm |

John

What does that have to do with anything?

February 28, 2013 at 10:01 pm |

Norman

What does that have to do with anything?! I've been asking the same question. Can anybody prove that objects tens or even hundreds of millions of years away still exists?

February 28, 2013 at 10:10 pm |

Fr33th1nk3r

Why does it matter if it still exists or not– as long as there is another 60 million years worth of "recorded data" on its way to earth for us to study?

February 28, 2013 at 10:20 pm |

Crocker

We won't be around long enough to find out.

February 28, 2013 at 11:54 pm |

Shane

You're right, but I fail to see why that would matter.

The likelihood of a Supermassive Black hold disappearing is pretty low though.

"Black holes" and general relativity are explained quite well in Genesis–for those with eyes to see.

February 28, 2013 at 9:52 pm |

TheBob

You know, when you leave your prime spot at the busy intersection where you were standing with a cardboard sign hanging off your neck that reads "Repent! The End is Near", some other loser is likely move in and take it. Or maybe you figured you sold enough pencils for the day and can call it quits till tomorrow?

Jesus loves you. But He does not love your poor punctuation. Place the comma inside of the right quotation mark, please.

February 28, 2013 at 10:12 pm |

Seansa

Sorry Cal, the only sentence in your retort that is grammatically correct is the first one. Pick at substance, not grammar.

February 28, 2013 at 10:27 pm |

Langkard

The sentence structure you needed there was "Jesus loves you, but he does not love poor punctuation." If you're going to criticize someone's punctuation, then it is a good idea to make sure your own punctuation is proper. "But" is a coordinating conjunction connecting the first sentence with the second and should thus have been separated with a comma. A semi-colon would also have worked.

February 28, 2013 at 10:55 pm |

Fr33th1nk3r

Oh, you mean the "firmament", which consists of a huge tent pulled over the "dome of the earth" (harkening back to the days of the Bible's flat earth) with little holes poked in it so light shines through and we think they are stars? Are we talking about the same "Genesis" that claims the universe came into existence in 6000 years (laughable– there are cultures on earth whose written history goes farther back than that)?

So, what ever galaxy you happen to live in, you are basically black hole food 'on a timer' spinning closer every day towards the event horizon.

~pass the popcorn and wait for the movie to start~

February 28, 2013 at 9:40 pm |

Ralter

No, not really. You can orbit a black hole just like any other star of the same mass and not be "dragged in" at all. It's only when things get too close and the tug of gravity on one side is far greater than the tug of gravity on the other side of the object is when things start to go very very bad.

February 28, 2013 at 10:35 pm |

Uncle Hank

It's a common belief that gravity prohibits light escaping black holes. Light, photons, have no mass. They are unaffected by gravity. The event horizon is where space is bent back on itself, returning the photons inward. Gravity has nothing to do with it.

February 28, 2013 at 9:37 pm |

Brian

No. Gravity does affect light. It also gets bent as it passes large objects.

February 28, 2013 at 9:45 pm |

Mark Hooper

Ahem. Sorry, photons have no REST mass. They do indeed have momentum and are affected by gravity. The experiments performed measuring the change in the trajectory of light passing close to stars was the proof of Einstein's General Relativity theory.

February 28, 2013 at 9:46 pm |

ajk68

Uncle Hank, the bending of space is gravity.

February 28, 2013 at 10:18 pm |

bob

Gravity warps the space time fabric and things "fall" around objects. If they do not have enough momentum, then they spiral on in to the gravitating object's surface. There is no "action at a distance distance" with gravity. I think that this is where the op is getting that gravity doesn't affect light, but warps the space so that it travels back in. By his view, he is right. Gravity doesn't really act "on" any abject itself. Rather, it warps the space time fabric so that objects "roll" or "fall" toward each other.

February 28, 2013 at 10:29 pm |

bob

I should point out, however, That Uncle Hank is very wrong in saying that "gravity has nothing to do with it". BTW, my post should have read " action at a distance". Not two distances.

February 28, 2013 at 10:41 pm |

PC

Pardon me, but it's an African-American hole. Thank you.

February 28, 2013 at 9:26 pm |

bgg1175

Maybe to you but Quentin Tarantino calls them the "N-word Hole!"

February 28, 2013 at 9:32 pm |

sharath

He got the behavior right, just the understanding what is and what is going on is way off. There is not such thing as twisting time, time is not a bendable dimension. If your theory states that time can be bent, well it time to go back to the drawing board to rethink the theory from "SCRATCH".

February 28, 2013 at 9:24 pm |

Andrew

"He got the behavior right, just the understanding what is and what is going on is way off. There is not such thing as twisting time, time is not a bendable dimension. If your theory states that time can be bent, well it time to go back to the drawing board to rethink the theory from "SCRATCH"."

So what you're saying is we need to readjust all of General Relativity "from scratch"? Cause it's not only time that "bends", space bends too. (Space behaves mostly the same way as time, except that they are orthagonal to each other)

I suggest you google the phrase "gravitational lensing". Since light is forced to travel on a very particular pathway through spacetime (invariant interval I=0... which is basically like saying that light always covers the exact same distance through spacetime in the exact same time.) it is succeptible to being "bent" literally by having a giant mass distort spacetime around the light path. The path light typically takes is distorted by the mass, so it tends to distort, and hence we observe the phenomenon known as "gravitational lensing".

You can actually even observe gravitational redshift with a sufficiently well calibrated lazer at the top of a sufficiently large building. People have done it before, use the height of the bilding and the incredible precision we can generate lazers with to be able to determine a change in frequency at the bottom, caused purely by gravity.

All of these require first and foremost that general relativity be accurate. They require space-time behave exactly as this article above describes.

Time can be bent just like any of the three spacial dimensions. I'm sorry but your intuition is not strong enough for me to abandon the past nearly 100 years of research and evidence supporting general relativity.

February 28, 2013 at 9:37 pm |

Jason

lazer is actually laser or rather light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, just a factoid to further validate your claims

February 28, 2013 at 10:34 pm |

Lokari

Let's see... believe a professional astrophysicist, or some random poster on the net. Hmmm. Tough call.

February 28, 2013 at 10:23 pm |

Ralter

You forgot that the big idea from Einstein is that space and time are not separate from each other. So yes, time is being warped, pretty badly even. If you got into a low orbit around a black hole, you'll go into the future. If the black hole is spinning near light speed, the effects are even worse. He even came up with a time-travel idea using wormholes and relativistic speeds.

February 28, 2013 at 10:43 pm |

Andrew

Thank you Landau!!! I always appreciate it when you remember to link the actual paper that was submitted. I hate when I have to track down the source from just author and the name of the journal, worse still when it's just author and publishing date.

February 28, 2013 at 9:16 pm |

JamesFoley

This article reminds me of The Modified Newtonian Dynamics theory. I wonder if there is a connection? Anyone have an answer?

February 28, 2013 at 9:14 pm |

lolwut

wat

February 28, 2013 at 9:39 pm |

JamesFoley

google it

February 28, 2013 at 10:43 pm |

Will Terman

Doesn't seem to have anything to do with MOND, which hypothesizes a change in the force of gravity at galactic scales and beyond. MOND attempts to account for the flat rotation curve of stars about the galactic center by tweaking the force of gravity instead of positing the existence of some as yet undetected "dark" matter.

February 28, 2013 at 11:26 pm |

James Foley

So then can the MOND formula be applied to black hole gravitational pull as it's gravity applies to a cosmos? Can MOND be applied to our own galaxy's central black hole for example? And then the results expanded to include other nearby galaxies?

March 1, 2013 at 12:56 am |

Will Terman

@James: The "tweak" I mentioned re MOND theory, involves a proposed new constant, a(0), that would adjust the actual acceleration experienced by a body far from the galactic center of mass. Its value is 1.2 x 10^-12 m/s/s, which is very small relative to typical accelerations on the scale of our solar system. When compared to the huge accelerations involved with black holes, it is even more insignificant. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics

March 1, 2013 at 2:10 am |

Major Tom

Shoddy reporting again, Elizabeth Landau:

"[...] not even light can escape the enormous gravitational pull. Still, they are some of the brightest objects in the universe [...]"

You didn't notice that you contradict yourself in two adjacent sentences? Or did you realize it and just said "ah the f* with it"?

Black hole are in fact "black" because not even light can escape from them. It's the rim of the black hole's event horizon that is bright.

February 28, 2013 at 8:56 pm |

David Nelson

In your hurry to point out an error you missed the part where the article is actually correct.

Unless you are just trying to be a jerk and intentionally overlook the material that is swirling around the black hole just beyond the event horizon.

February 28, 2013 at 9:12 pm |

Major Tom

In your hurry to post a comment you missed the part where I say "it's the rim of the black hole's event horizon that is bright". The rim of the event horizon is not the black hole.

February 28, 2013 at 9:22 pm |

Andrew

"The rim of the event horizon is not the black hole".

Honestly I find this to be splitting hairs. Yes, light cannot escape, but if we're looking for a black hole, as she said, we are looking for among the brightest objects we can find, not the dimmest. Yes technically the brightness is "right outside the event horizon" but considering you couldn't fit a hair in between the distance between the high energetic 'rim' and the event horizon itself, I mean 'splitting hairs' in as most literal a sense as possible.

February 28, 2013 at 9:29 pm |

Major Tom

You're obviously not familiar with the precision of the discipline called "physics". It's a little different from say, cooking, or sports, or fashion, where you can arbitrarily mix and match things and call it good. There is the black hole, and there is the glowing stuff orbiting around it. And the two are not one and the same. In fact, there is typically a distance of millions to thousands of millions of miles between the two. If you think that's "splitting hairs", you really shouldn't be commenting on science articles. At all.

February 28, 2013 at 9:49 pm |

Hobo to Science

A black hole and all the parts of the black hole, from the event horizon to the outer rim of the event horizen make up a black hole. So like a toilet, from the bowl to the water in the bowl to "other objects" in the bowl can't excape the black hole, its all the same.

February 28, 2013 at 10:26 pm |

Major Tom

@Hobo – I'll try to water it down to your level. When you go to Home Depot to buy a toilet, does it come with the water and the "other objects inside it"? If you don't know the answer, visit your local Home Depot or any favorite home supplies store. Hope that gets the point across.

February 28, 2013 at 10:51 pm |

drjrf

" millions to thousands of millions of miles between the two. If you think that's "splitting hairs", you really shouldn't be commenting on science articles. At all."

In terms of space, considering its rather large size, one could argue that extremely small distances is splitting hairs?
Are Saturn's rings considered part of Saturn?

March 1, 2013 at 1:28 am |

Andrew

"You're obviously not familiar with the precision of the discipline called "physics"?

I'm not? Cause I've taken a number of physics classes and I'm pretty sure most of my professors would likewise agree that was splitting hairs. Remember physics is the discipline that inspires jokes along the lines of "consider a spherical cow", and intuition is to think in terms of orders of magnitude. When we start talking about arbitarily small boundary conditions, yes, in my experiance studying physics, that is where being overly pedantic can start.

It's a precise subject, but between the high energy "rim" and the physical event horizon, there is an infiniticimal difference in distance, which makes calling them the same seem fairly reasonable.

This is also the subject where Fred Hoyle's "big bang" statement became the de facto name for an exapanding universe model. Physicists aren't so concerned with tiny lexicon details so much as they are quantifing uncertainty in data.

March 1, 2013 at 2:53 am |

Rob

More like Major Hole...

February 28, 2013 at 9:41 pm |

Jayson

It's "bright" because of the radiation it admits, not because of light that can escape it. Reread the article and maybe google Hawking Radiation. Black holes do emit radiation, and a TON of it. I'll quote for you the part of the article that mentions this:

"Still, they are some of the brightest objects in the universe because of the massive amounts of energy released when matter gets eaten by a black hole."

February 28, 2013 at 9:51 pm |

Major Tom

Distinguish between the light *emitted* (not "admitted") from objects getting sucked into the black hole, which is due to violent , high energy collisions at the rim of the event horizon, and Hawking radiation. The two have NOTHING to do with one another. Hawking radiation is due to quantum effects. It's not even visible light.

February 28, 2013 at 11:11 pm |

Jason

This was already touched on but it needs to be addressed again. Black Holes do emit light, it just isn't light on the visible wavelengths. So not only is the rim of the Black Hole bright with visible light, but the actual mass in the central part leading to the singularity emits non-visible light such as X-Rays and Gamma rays. The article would then be correct depending on what way you view the Black Hole. So Major Tom, just because it isn't visible light doesn't mean it isn't light.

If Jesus had wanted us to know what was in a black hole, he would have told us when he wrote the Bible!

February 28, 2013 at 8:49 pm |

phazon

To bad Jesus didn't pen the bible it was men under the direction of God the father of Jesus.

February 28, 2013 at 8:57 pm |

John

If the tooth fairy had wanted you to run your mouth he would have given you a good punch to get it started.

February 28, 2013 at 9:00 pm |

oldesalt

So our intelectual ability to answer these questions must have been given to us by Satan.

February 28, 2013 at 9:01 pm |

toothball

Praise Satan and his sinful science.

March 1, 2013 at 8:37 am |

buuubbba

where does santa fall in to all of this?

February 28, 2013 at 8:35 pm |

TheBob

Into the chimney. As always.

February 28, 2013 at 8:48 pm |

dotheflippin'math

First of all, it's not an empty "hole." It's the exact opposite. It is so full of matter and energy that it creates a gravitational "sink-hole." You don't go through a black hole, you become a part of it...only it takes infinite time to reach it...go figure. The light and energy that is emitted comes from the edge of the event horizon (awesome movie, BTW). As matter falls into the event horizon, some of it explodes outwards, away from the black hole. Once you venture inside the event horizon, you don't come back out, even if you're a photon. We observe the black holes by their energy emissions (at the event horizon), bent light/energy waves that are affected by its gravity, and its pull on other visible space objects. Galaxies would fly apart without them. It's a Catch-22. No need to lose any sleep over them. There aren't any even remotely close, not even the one at the center of our own galaxy (the Milky Way...no, not the candy bar).

February 28, 2013 at 7:08 pm |

FireLikeIYa

Thanks for your contribution. People like you make the world a better place for all.

February 28, 2013 at 8:44 pm |

TheBob

"...only it takes infinite time to reach it..."? Who told you that?

You really need to learn physics by attending a university, not from cartoons and CNN.

February 28, 2013 at 9:05 pm |

Brian

If I understand the astrophysics correctly, it only appears to take forever for something falling into a black hole from the reference of an observer outside of the event horizon. From the reference of the thing falling into the black hole, I'm not sure what to make of that.

February 28, 2013 at 9:06 pm |

Andrew

You are correct. Fully.

February 28, 2013 at 9:25 pm |

elissa jung

DO YOU THINK CONGRESS COULD FIT IN ONE OF THESE???

February 28, 2013 at 9:18 pm |

sqeptiq

Congress IS one.

February 28, 2013 at 9:30 pm |

Andrew

"Only it takes infinite time to reach there".

Ah, the beauty of people playing armchair physicist. If I wanted to be pedantic, I'd say such a line has no meaning in context... but for most general purposes, 'you're wrong' is sufficient.

The reason has to do with the nature of spacetime and relativity. You measure time according to a "reference frame", now for everything in your own referance frame time is moving at the normal rate you've always experianced it moving in.

This is known as the object's frame (or your own frame) by which you can define as exhibing "proper time". Now the thing about "proper time" is that it's shortest in your own frame. Once you examine your timeline from a different frame of reference (like a person looking in on an object entering a black hole) you then get to apply a time dilation corrective factors.

From there it implies that on a black hole's event horizon, if you're being sucked in, you'd be sucked in perfectly normally, as though nothing were happening. You'd cross the event horizon in your own time and other than being flatened, stretched, and burned to a crisp, you'd be fine.

It's only from the observer looking in that things are different. To them, you'd appear moving slower and slower until you finally stop at the event horizon. That's the difference between a dialated time and a proper time... but to the individual being sucked in, things procede normally.

February 28, 2013 at 9:24 pm |

DarthChip

Ah, the arrogance of those who "think" they're smarter than everyone else.

"Only it takes infinite time to reach there"

This is not wrong, as you assert, but absolutely corect. Now, you got it right when you say they will appear to go slower and slower until they stop. But they just "appear" to stop. In fact, from the observers standpoint, they're moving imperceptibly slow. They're still moving closer, though, and will continue to do so for all eternity.

February 28, 2013 at 10:25 pm |

HappyBottomRidingClub

LOL. He said "Pandantic"

March 1, 2013 at 9:59 am |

BMainski

Referencing Poplawski notes, it is possible for spinning, compressed matter to expand beyond the other end of a black hole even causing the creation of other universes. The big bang has many unsolved questions and Poplawski may be on to something helping to answer some these questions. Big bang suggests that the universe began as a seemingly impossible “singularity,” an infinitely small point containing an infinitely high concentration of matter, expanding in size to what we observe today. The theory of inflation, a super-fast expansion of space proposed in recent decades, fills in many important details, such as why slight lumps in the concentration of matter in the early universe coalesced into large celestial bodies such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

February 28, 2013 at 10:39 pm |

cati adamson

Jacob. I see what you mean... Edna`s st0rry is impressive... on tuesday I bought a top of the range Lancia Straton since getting a check for $6965 this-last/five weeks and even more than ten-grand last-munth. this is really the best job I've ever done. I actually started 10-months ago and right away started making a cool at least $85 per/hr. I went to this site.......... BIT40.ℂOℳ

February 28, 2013 at 6:27 pm |

Tinaz

I must be living near a black hole because I feel I'm turning around every 4 min. every day & I still seem to be standing still.

February 28, 2013 at 5:28 pm |

BMainski

No, you're just living too close to a meth lab.

February 28, 2013 at 10:44 pm |

nate

i think its cool

February 28, 2013 at 4:49 pm |

dotheflippin'math

To dcoke and all the other amateur physicists/professional idiots, unless you can do the math, I would stop guessing. I don't understand the author's analogy about the man turning to stay in the same place, and judging by his lack of explanation, neither did he. The recent finding that the universe is unstable, and will eventually fall apart into a new dimension is reassuring. Logic says the entire universe (including "other universes" and/or dimensions that we cannot observe) cannot have a finite existence. If there is a god, where does he/she/it exist? There must be something that exists outside our known universe. Maybe our whole universe is just a marble in some next-dimension's kid's toy box. All that dark matter and dark energy is probably the duct tape and gummy-tack holding our universe together.

February 28, 2013 at 4:38 pm |

ricdesan

Just mention the imminently logical metaverse hypothesis and go about your business. Its the only thing that seems to hold up the more we discover with concrete results. Hell, it makes perfect sense that black holes bust holes in our reality to create big bangs in quatum states outside our universe.

After there is no more matter for them to digest, they enventually evaporate via "Hawking Radiation" .

February 28, 2013 at 4:16 pm |

Me

They evaporate! Read "a Brief History of Time"

February 28, 2013 at 9:15 pm |

Esu Miwa

Leroy, Dcoke and Others:

How do we know
1) There is a blackhole at the center of our galaxy:
Observations across time. Took 5 years of observations to capture the evidence of a blackhole at the center of our galaxy by plotting the orbits of fast moving stars at our galactic core.
2) Gravity can escape a blackhole:
No, a blackhole IS gravity. The Gravity that is pulling/holding a star together eventually wins against the energy created that is pushing outwards from the center of a star. The star is no longer producing enough energy to fight against gravity pulling at the substance of the star taht it collapses on itself
3) Blackholes destroy everything
A blackhole is everything collapsed into a single point of infinite density. The matter/energy is still there, just infinitely small and dense. Its not lost or destroyed.
4) An artists paints the blackhole and NASA says its a real object.
Really? REALLLY?

February 28, 2013 at 3:57 pm |

David

I like the idea of curvature as a description of gravity a lot better than graviton particles. When they come up in calculations we are supposed to find them in nature or by experiment. It sounds like a contradiction that a Graviton particle could move faster than light which is what the escape from the Schwartzschild radius would mean. Physics is still incomplete and I look forward to future discovery.

Well, from what I understand, the energy and matetr we can detect doesnot emerge form the event horizon or the infinite point of density.

Rather, at the Event Horizon matter and energy are coliding with each other at near light speed which causes heating/friction/collisions producing even more emergent energy. But it is not created or emergent from the blackhole or its point of infinite density. Its coming from the stuff that isnt fallinf toward the black whole, into the area of no return, but rather the stuff that is literally in orbit around the black hole and the event horizon.

February 28, 2013 at 3:49 pm |

I'm The Best

There is also Hawking radiation that comes from a black hole, although not nearly as much as from the stuff falling into it. It's how black holes eventually lose mass. This happens so slowly that a black hole that started at the beginning of the universe wouldn't be much smaller now than it was then. But it's from the massive amount of energy that is around the black hole, particle/anti-particle pairs pop into existance at this high energy, ocasionally, instead of annihalating each other like they usually do, one of the two fall into the black hole and the other one escapes.

So even a black hole that isn't destroying things is giving off some sort of radiation, not enough for us to detect though. The heat and friction of the mass falling into black holes is the cause of all the radiation we see.

February 28, 2013 at 4:19 pm |

Esu Miwa

I was responding to the question of "how can energy escape a blackhole if light cannot even escape".

As to the theory of Hawking Radiation, to my limited knpowledge, we do not have physical evidence of hawking radiatipon yet, its a mathematical theory at the moment,.

The articale is pointing tophysical evidence supporting/proving a theory about the affect and effect of a blackhole.

However, the decomposition of an elementary hawking particle is not intrinisnct to the function of the blackhole but ratehr to the UNiverse itself. Or, in a better statement, the hawking radiotion is not created BY the blackhole but a result ofv the blackhole. Where as Light is created by a star itself thru th e fusion of atoms.

Of course, I do not completely claim any authoratative understanding of Hawkings, or Tuarek or any other physcicsts theiory, theory on blackholes. =)

February 28, 2013 at 4:46 pm |

Esu Miwa

So, not a physicist, but read and try to understand what I can.

1) A black hole is a single point of infinite mass that, by "pulling" the fabric of the Universe (Space-Time), alters both the flow of Space and Time around the infinite point of gravity.
2) A black hole influences all of the fabric of teh Universe – Space-Time – around to a certain distance to a point where any matter/energy will definately fall "towards" the infinite point or not fall "towards" the point of infinite density. This is the Event Horizon.
3) To visualize this, an artist piants the concept as an area with no color – no information about the Universe (Space-Time) can be percieved as it is falling "toward" the infinite density point but surrounded by information about the Universe that has not fallen "toward" the infintie density point.
4) SInce the infinite density and its resultant sphere of influence from the Event Horizon is a sphere – a three dimensional object formed by all the gravitational force being applied equally across its surfece – and it si rotating in space time, the force of its spinning litterally grabs at the fabric of teh Universe( Space-time) and twists its. A visual way to graasp this is to grab a pice fo cloth between two fingers – that is teh pioint of infinite density – and then twist the fabric. Thus, in order to "stand still" at the edge of the event horizon, you would have to turn – or better twist against the direction of the fabnric of space time so as to remin in one direction/facing a given direction by turning 1 rotation of spce in 4 minutes of time. This can be visualized by our moon: it orbits fast enough to keep one side facing the earth!
5) Black holes merge with other black holes
6)Black holes continue to grow simply by drawng in more and more mass. Remeber that noihing can be destroyed: its either converted to mass or to energy, so anything falling toward the point of infinite density adds to the total sum of the infinite density. 14 billion years is a lot of time to lioterally gain weight!

Big post, excuse the typoes/spelling and punctuation...thanks.

February 28, 2013 at 3:45 pm |

David

Thank You!

February 28, 2013 at 3:50 pm |

Major Tom

1: Wrong. NOT infinite mass. Nothing in the universe is infinite.
2: Wrong. NOT infinite gravity. Nothing in the universe is infinite.
4: Wrong. NOT infinite density. Nothing in the universe is infinite.

Too many other wrong statements.

You need to understand the difference between "very large" and "infinite". If a black hole had infinite mass and gravity, the entire universe would have collapsed into it.

February 28, 2013 at 9:17 pm |

Pat

Major Tom – Wrong

Any mass greater then zero that is in an infinitely small space has infinite density.

For someone who likes correcting other you should think things though before posting

February 28, 2013 at 10:49 pm |

MisterSnow

calculus much? In this case, as in most layman oriented translations of physics, "infinity" is shorthand for "approaching infinity" which is correct from our local perspective. Something with a density that has exponents upon exponents might as well be infinite to something with the density of a human. (but maybe not the density of a human mind)

February 28, 2013 at 10:57 pm |

TheBob

Obviously neither of you really know what "infinity" is. Or for that matter have any familiarity with basic mathematics.

Think of the largest number you can imagine. Now raise it to the power of itself. Now raise the result to the power of that result. Now do that for the next 24 hours. Take THAT result and raise it to the power of itself. Keep doing that for a year. Is that "infinity"? No. Is that anywhere near infinity? No.

Major Tom is right. Nothing in the universe is infinite. Infinity exists only in mathematics.

February 28, 2013 at 11:37 pm |

MisterSnow

Well, TheBob proves my last point without ever having taken calculus. Seems he only likes the math philosophy idea of infinity. See, in basic calculus, we learn that once an ever increasing number exits our observational limit, it is said to be "approaching infinity." Here is some proof, depending on his age bracket, that we need more money for college students, or more prescription coverage in medicare.

March 1, 2013 at 12:11 am |

TheBob

@MisterMoron – Where exactly did you learn your version of "calculus"? Somewhere in Kansas perhaps? The state that prohibits teaching of science and once declared pi to be 3.0 by decree?

Real calculus says nothing about "observational limits". You need to demand a full refund from whatever for-profit "school" you attended. Try attending a real school. You may have to move hundreds of miles from the backwater you live now, but it'll be well worth it. "Observational limits". LOL!!!

How does the energy coming out of the black hole escape it's gravitational pull if light can't even escape? I'm not being sarcastic, I'd really like to know. If anyone on here has a good understanding of black holes and the physics that make them work, please explain it to me.

There's these imaginary things called "books". Crack one open once in a while. It may save you from posting embarrassingly stupid posts online.

February 28, 2013 at 3:45 pm |

Pat

And math is all made up too. You know that math that is used in all technologies today like that fancy new fangled light box with keys you type on to post here. That same math shows that re-entry is possible giving the proper materials and geometries to mitigate the heat generated. Your unintelligent arguments are just silly at this point.

Get back into your strait jacket, dude. Geez!! I'm surprised you're allowed to use a computer.

March 1, 2013 at 11:15 am |

Gilad

Hawking radiation

February 28, 2013 at 2:27 pm |

ajz

because its just a "make believe" story from papa NASA/media

February 28, 2013 at 2:37 pm |

CA Liberal

In a black hole below the event horizon nothing can escape. The huge energy comes from above the event horizon. Matter is being torn apart by the gravity and sends most of it's energy outwards.

February 28, 2013 at 2:55 pm |

Saltydog01

@lasermetrologist –
Black holes earned their moniker because inside a certain radius,
known as the event horizon, nothing escapes – not even light.

Uncertainty principle
Or so it seemed. Then in 1974 Hawking showed that, according to quantum theory, black holes should emit radiation after all. This is a consequence of the uncertainty principle, which says we can never be sure that an apparent vacuum is truly empty and, instead, that virtual particles are constantly appearing in pairs. These couples, made of a particle and its antimatter counterpart, rapidly annihilate and vanish again, so normally go unnoticed.

However, if a pair of photons pops up right at the event horizon, they may find themselves on different sides, with one flying free outside and the other trapped forever within. This prevents them from merging and vanishing, so the outside photon is effectively emitted by the black hole (see diagram, above right).

Hawking predicted black holes should give off a steady stream of such radiation – and many scientists assume he is right. The problem is that no one has ever actually seen it.

Using experiments on earth and mathematical insight, we have an idea of how it works. Gravity can it seems, escape a black hole. For someone not sure of how they are observed, suns and other matter have been seen with their huge mass in close orbit around something not seen if there is no infalling matter. It lights up with spectacular brilliance when something falls in. Recently, a star being torn apart was observed from the microwave signal. Fake matter or a part of space that for a tiny moment looks like an electron or a heavier particle pair will appear out of space. Because the black hole is rotating at near light speeds an electron e- and a positron e+ will briefly appear. A cosmic ray striking the earth because of the effect of Einstein's relativity might only see itself as moving a yard yet we see it as moving a hundred miles or so. One particle is pointed at the black hole and for it time slows to zero. Its done! The other particle of the pair follows the twisted space away like water spinning off of a ball. It becomes real by stealing the energy from the rotation of the black hole. The escaping particle will see itself moving a short distance in time where if we saw it from far off it would have traveled a long distance. Black hole slows down, gets smaller. Some time maybe 10 to the 100th years or 10 followed by 100 0's it will be slowly spinning, hot and quicky shrinking and will mildly explode into more particles and x rays. This example wil also give you an idea of how thin the black hole surface could be to allow escape.

February 28, 2013 at 3:48 pm |

Buck Rogers

Does anyone know what version of photo-shop NASA uses in order to create their cartoon 'images' of outer space?

http://www.fountainsofthegreatdeep.com/Alien.htm

February 28, 2013 at 1:49 pm |

MarsQ

Wow. Just when I thought that ignorance has reached an all time low, you, Buck Rogers, post these asinine comments. Please say that you are simply joking around and that you're really NOT that stupid.

February 28, 2013 at 8:36 pm |

Leroy

and this was all figured out by what?? a telescope or the cartoon picture?? or wait did someone go there and watch it happen? or no maybe it was all figured out by someonone timing the speed with a stop watch... its all just theory not fact

February 28, 2013 at 1:42 pm |

Sy2502

Wow I feel dumber just for reading your post.

February 28, 2013 at 3:47 pm |

Blaze

Wow. Take it easy, these guys are just trying to liven up the comment area.

February 28, 2013 at 9:58 pm |

Pilgrim

It is a SIn to try to understand the mind of God! Seek not the answers in Science – seek it in the Word of the Lord!

February 28, 2013 at 12:27 pm |

Colby

It's ignorant people like you that hold the human race back. Unbelievable.

February 28, 2013 at 12:45 pm |

AMR

Troll successful

February 28, 2013 at 12:57 pm |

anferco

Be honest..have you ever seen "The Lord?

February 28, 2013 at 1:34 pm |

Kevin F

Troll or not I just thought I would point out a logical flaw here. If it is a "Sin to try to understand the mind of God" then evey one who tries to do so by reading the Bible is a sinner.

February 28, 2013 at 1:34 pm |

Andrew

Dude, I am a devout believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and I tell you that science is not evil. It is one methodology (and a good one) to explore and understand this incredible universe God put us in. In some ways, to understand the universe is to understand some elements of God's infinite nature and know Him better.

February 28, 2013 at 1:40 pm |

David

I have thought about what you said about the relationship of science and the Biblefor decades. God creates truth. Make a study of what He made in great detail. Make a study of the first part of Genesis. The order of events and the knowledge contained in the description of the events is very unusual. What are the chances that primative people could get all of that right? How many numbers do you have to pick in the big lottery? What are your chances of winning? The order of creation is correct. (Don't equate this with creationism.) You see the first light, Cambrian explosion of life. The size of the creatures in the ocean. The kind of life that came from the ocean to dry land. Early in Genesis there is a mention of creating on the surface of the waters. Something happening on the surface of a fluid is the description of the information contained on the surface, not the volume, of a black hole. Leonard Susskind talks about the very new idea (2008) of the Holographic universe. Every detail of the tiniest volume of space of the entire universe can be contained in a surface like the one around a black hole. Leonard quotes this often, When you eliminate everything you can, what is left no matter how unlikely is the truth. (Sherlock Holmes stories) Here is what is left. A stone age early bronze age nomadic people had the order of events and description of the early universe and life on earth correct over a period of 14.5 billion years. That is impossible. The only way that Genesis could be written down is there had to be an observer who told them. The information only exists in our time not three to six thousand years ago.. How old was the observer? At least as old as the beginning itself. Days are defined as you progress from billions of years to the definition of the rotational period of the earth a 24 hour day. There is a message left for the people of our time, parts of the book will remain closed until the time of abundant knowledge. In the entire history of Man, that is now. The same observer just predicted our time thousands of years into the future of Genesis. Let us make man in our own image corresponds to the findings by Richard Leakey Jr. in "Origins Revisited". He found that there was a large change in the behavior of man six to ten thousand years ago. He said that if this had happened in any other animal he would call it a new species. Modern Darwinism shows there can be rapid or catastrophic evolution. The Old Testament is a reccord of the first of the new kind of Man, the first kings, trechery, war, heros, cities, and inventions. Take the time scale of man as a day, we the highly inventive species represent only a few minutes. What does this tell you about Genesis? What is the old Hebrew name of the Observer? A name is a prophesy not a noise. Before readers write hurtfull replies, just relax and live your life the way you want too. Nothing will change for you. If you read and understand here is the proof of God told to be for the people of this time from thousands of years ago.

February 28, 2013 at 3:05 pm |

BMainski

Although the power of the human brain has grown very little in the past 4 thousand years, our shared knowledge in the last 200 years resulted in answers not easily understood as an explanation found in the bible. Some people need to keep on believing.

February 28, 2013 at 10:55 pm |

MisterSnow

God creates truth, science relays fact, both limited to human comprehension of the time. Odds are that what may be God was some 4th dimensional creature trying to give information to some Australians and/or Africans quite a while ago. Then, through human limitation and thousands of years of the telephone game, things got a little mixed up purple monkey dishwasher.

February 28, 2013 at 11:09 pm |

MarsQ

Pilgrim, are you for real? I hope you don't contract a fatal disease that requires medicine that was developed by a thinking scientist..NOT YOUR GOD! If we were to follow your advice, we'd still be living in the Stone Age. Do you have a cell phone? Flat screen TV? Car? Men with brains to THINK invented those. Get off of your holier than thou crap. You have got to be kidding.

February 28, 2013 at 8:40 pm |

palintwit

Most people don't realize that Sarah Palin University ranks a close second to the United States Air Force Academy in the field of aerospace engineering.

wow! many thanks for that amazing piece of writing. I really liked it for the core. Hope you retain posting these kinds of incredible content articles Kai po che full song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIlMhcNHzy

February 28, 2013 at 9:53 am |

Paulo

Halle Berry

February 28, 2013 at 9:36 am |

Buck Rogers

Back in 1949, the military made an interesting discovery whilst launching V2's into space. Since then, these former Nazi rocket scientists mapped-out the coordinated the alleged 'space race' to con the entire world into thinking that they could 'land' man-made meteors (dropped from cargo planes). Since we now know that human 'spaceflight' is the grandest scientific fraud in human history (they cannot reenter the upper atmosphere w/o vaporizing at hypersonic), then we also know that these alleged 'images' via NASA, are indeed fake as a three dollar bill. Yet due to this incredibly, massive deception led by a group of astro-evolutionists, we have the International Fake Station and these pathetically goofy 'photos' of outer space to entertain us, and the con is still duping the masses, just as planned.....

http://www.fountainsofthegreatdeep.com/IFS.htm

February 28, 2013 at 9:29 am |

David

Sad, just so damn sad.

February 28, 2013 at 9:39 am |

SethB

I would like to vote this man off the planet

February 28, 2013 at 9:52 am |

Karen M

I would like to volunteer him for the first manned black hole orbit.

February 28, 2013 at 1:04 pm |

MisterSnow

Seconded.

February 28, 2013 at 11:13 pm |

MikeyNYC

Its more than sad, its frightening! In this day and age, to believe that man never was launched into space is complete and total ignorance! I guess our satellites and the space station are NASA constructs as well. If everything burned up in the atmosphere before it could ever reach the ground, how do you explain meteor impact craters scattered all over earth? In fact, a meteor come through into our atmosphere about a week ago. Is this also a construct of the "Nazi" NASA scientists? I hope and pray that you have no contact with children, since to teach a child such utter drivel should be a crime!

February 28, 2013 at 9:56 am |

Frank Zappa

For what reason would a bunch of people perpetrate this elaborate hoax?

February 28, 2013 at 10:49 am |

CaEd

Unlike a black hole, human ignorance has no known boundaries.

February 28, 2013 at 11:45 am |

AMR

Is this website meant to be ironic? Sure looks like it.

February 28, 2013 at 1:00 pm |

The Truth

I think your tin foil hat is crooked or your off your meds.

February 28, 2013 at 3:41 pm |

Sy2502

How's that tin foil hat working out for you? Is it so tight it's cutting circulation to your brain?

February 28, 2013 at 3:48 pm |

Ray

It's really a shame that the internet has allowed your kind of intellectual ignorance to propagate and take up bandwidth. Perhaps you should consider the following: before composing screeds targeting provable science, you might want to expand your mind by trying to understand it... even if you're only capable of only a little bit.

The fact that you are posting your 'comments' from a computer, containing electronics developed by engineers and scientists, that is connected to a network of computers, also developed by engineers and scientists, would be enough to get a person of average intellect thinking. The fact that this escapes you is a testament to your IQ.

February 28, 2013 at 4:13 pm |

Observer

Who is the "we" that you continually refer to in your post, i.e. "we now know that space flight is the grandest scientific fraud...." Since when does the word WE signify a group of dumbf**ks?

February 28, 2013 at 9:10 pm |

Blah

Hail Satan!

March 1, 2013 at 6:06 am |

Kaiser

Thats funny, because I've seen the ISS with my own eyes. Give your zip code to NASA and they'll tell you when she'll pass over your tin foil shack.

March 1, 2013 at 8:20 am |

Marty M

The more I read these galactic characteristics, the more convinced I become that galaxies are independent communities with their own life cycles. For example, there is no singular Big Bang that creates the entire Universe. It seems the existence of Black Holes at the center of all galaxies is a strong indicator that the Black Hole is the key to the life cycle of a galaxy. Perhaps a Black Hole sucks in all matter within its reach (its galaxy). At some point, it becomes so dense and superheated that it explodes (the Galactic Big Bang), thus releasing much of the matter to form a new galaxy. The spin of the Black Hole determines the spin, and the shape, of the galaxy. Once the Big Bang expansion settles out, the galaxy will then begin to shrink and collapse back in on itself as the Galactic Cycle begins anew.

February 28, 2013 at 9:08 am |

B

Makes sense...our sun has similar characteristics...

February 28, 2013 at 9:26 am |

nwg6011

If Eienstein were wrong, even if his calculations were off by a tiny fraction, your GPS would never work.

February 28, 2013 at 9:30 am |

Weston

Actually, that's a pretty good theory. Now go get some evidence to back it up and we'll have yet another theory to the beginning of the universe.

February 28, 2013 at 3:00 pm |

bob

black holes don't suck moron. it is pushed in there. example: does a blow dryer "suck" in air and "magically" turn it around to push it out?nope. or does a plane get "sucked into the air? really marty it's basic physics a small child can understand

February 28, 2013 at 9:29 pm |

rar

maybe the black holes created by God are a force that tugs at the ever expanding universe so it has a counterforce against it.

February 28, 2013 at 8:54 am |

Caveman

I cannot stand the use of the word "space-time" .. First of all, Einstein is wrong about one thing, that space itself bends. This is a huge misconception. What is going on is that matter receives energy from its environment – space. Then, at the core of every atom, the energy that is being absorbed from space is being turned into a gravitational field... energy first, then field generation.. at which time photons pass through this field causing the bending of light... it is NOT space which is curved, it's the gravitational field around matter that gives you the "illusion" that it is curved... wake up people.. Einstein was wrong, and Nikola Tesla's Dynamic Theory of Gravity is correct, which is classified.

Where has this person been for the past 70 years and why hasn't he published.

Must be a government cover-up or a conspiracy perpetrated by the Alien Space Society of Higher Order Life Evolved Species (A$$ho1es).

February 28, 2013 at 11:52 am |

Marty M

It is right to expand on Einstein's theories. Yes, Einstein was a brilliant man for his time, just as Galileo was for his time. However, as new discoveries are made, those brilliant theories need to be adjusted accordingly. If everyone accepted a universal position, then human knowledge will stop expanding as it always has!

February 28, 2013 at 9:19 am |

TZToronto

Science is always changing theories. That's why they're theories, not facts. Faith, on the other hand, demands belief in unchanging "fact." Of course, the "facts" of faith are untestable. Science tests its ideas (theories) and makes adjustments when findings make bits and pieces of theories untenable. So if Einstein's theories need some re-thinking and adjustment, he'd probably be OK with that.

February 28, 2013 at 10:26 am |

Kevin C.

hahaha awesome. classified why? because if we were to find out it would blow our collective minds? certain people can't afford to be wrong? if it was the true alternative to Einstein, what delusional conspiracy is going on that would suppress it?

February 28, 2013 at 11:56 am |

skyatimus

So if you're flying a space craft at about 50 percent the speed of light and pass between one black hole of 4 million solar masses exerting a gravitational attraction equivalent to 5 percent the speed of light and another black whole of 8 million solar masses exerting a gravitational force of about 10 percent the speed of light, and the ship follows a straight path between the two, what's the astronaut's name?

I wish I had a dollar every time an article about black holes uses the exact phrase "not even light can escape".

February 28, 2013 at 8:33 am |

Smart

Not even a dollar can escape.

February 28, 2013 at 9:09 am |

TZToronto

Isaac Asimov suggested that if a gravity particle exists (a graviton), then it might be possible for such a particle itself to be sucked into the black hole. In effect the black hole might effectively cease to exist since, with no gravitons escaping, nothing further could be sucked into it. Mass, light, gravity–all would be gone. Perhaps this would be the origin of the singularity that resulted in the Big Bang and will eventually result in another singularity and another Big Bang, ad infinitum.

February 28, 2013 at 10:38 am |

Tom

Yes, it is an over used phase that just means nothing. Just a repeat again and again due to nothing else known to say.

February 28, 2013 at 10:00 pm |

Jim

This is cool I want to fly into one

February 28, 2013 at 7:42 am |

its all fake

Is it true there is a ring around Uranus ?

February 28, 2013 at 6:59 am |

urfake2

Not sure. The best way to find out is to get down there and look.

February 28, 2013 at 8:18 am |

Morwen

That was the perfect comment! I havent seen one like that in a long time. Thanks for making my day!

February 28, 2013 at 1:38 pm |

Marco

More like a burning ring of fire

February 28, 2013 at 1:33 pm |

Byrd

Wonder what effects these twists might have on us...Chubby...

February 28, 2013 at 6:57 am |

sburns54

I understand there is a black hole on Uranus.
Well, SOMONE had to be infantile enough to say it- I figured I'd get it out of the way.

February 28, 2013 at 6:52 am |

randy

LOL, thanks for the laugh! Best post on the page.

February 28, 2013 at 9:44 am |

ErikSchaefer

No, that would be a brown hole...

February 28, 2013 at 10:19 am |

Blaze

right you are

February 28, 2013 at 10:04 pm |

President Santorum

Can I shack up with someone else for the trip?

February 28, 2013 at 6:51 am |

urfake2

You can go with "its all fake". You both have something in common.

February 28, 2013 at 8:19 am |

da

nothing to see here move along.

February 28, 2013 at 6:38 am |

Bill

Welcome to the wonderful world of wormholes! Now all we have to do is build a station nearby, and call it Deep Space 9.

February 28, 2013 at 6:02 am |

Molundak

A hole is empty so why is the black hole a hole?

February 28, 2013 at 5:26 am |

james

The black hole condenses matter into energy and explodes, creating a new universe. Then the Martians come to earth in flying saucers , and destroy the earth.

February 28, 2013 at 5:15 am |

nwg6011

Why do we need Martians? We're perfectly capable of destroying the earth by ourselves.

February 28, 2013 at 9:34 am |

russell lee

The Big Bang – so-called – is not a given. It's possible that two or more things can clash together in space without making a sound.

February 28, 2013 at 4:59 am |

nwg6011

Who said anything about sound? The big bang was about a massive explosion of energy. It has nothing to do with how loud something is.

February 28, 2013 at 9:32 am |

MisterSnow

Usually after a Big Bang, all I want is space.

February 28, 2013 at 11:21 pm |

Kevin C.

so when all the galaxies spiral into their black holes and all that are left are black holes, then will they attract each other, becoming bigger, warping spacetime to the point the universe reverses acceleration and condenses into itself, causing another big bang? makes sense ehh?

February 28, 2013 at 4:53 am |

earl

no.

February 28, 2013 at 5:52 am |

Smart

Our galaxy is located at the end of a black hole.... everything here is just the reconstructed space-stuff sucked up by the black hole on the other side and spit out here.

February 28, 2013 at 9:11 am |

7

space-time oxymoron statement have you been to Grenitch (names spelled wrong I think)
did you know the measuring of objects passing through space is that we (Grenitch) biased time
there are 2 major first inertia push for nebulas, other p.articail mass clusters and small cluster solar objects.
the rolling mountain when objects first roll from top of one objects side to the bottom starting the wheel spinning
second black hole effect first inertia to the spin of the galaxy wheel.

February 28, 2013 at 4:52 am |

massive scary black hole

I will crush your soul (to a mathematical point).

February 28, 2013 at 3:54 am |

Matthew

@DLMurte,

The issue is, that while you can explain relatively "small" blackholes as the collapse of a star, you really can't explain a 2 million solar mass blackhole as the result of a massive star collapsing.That would require absolutely gargantuan stars (the maximum size I have ever seen discussed in my classes have been about 300 Solar masses or approximately 4 orders of magnitude smaller). Further, there are some blackholes another 3 orders of magnitude larger even than the one discussed here.

Also, don't forget that a super-massive blackhole seems to be a central characteristic to almost all galaxies. So it seems likely that these blackholes are tied galactic evolution rather than a big star collapsing. So the question is actually how did these specific black holes form?

If you want more information, wikipedia is never bad place to start...

Matthew, you pose some good questions and I would love to hear some informed responses to them. I have no education in astrophysics, but I find it fascinating. For many years, since I was in high school (about 12 years ago) I suspected that black holes played some role in holding galaxies together and it looks like that is true for the most part. I hope that the coming years bring more discoveries about black holes, I think they are fascinating!

February 28, 2013 at 2:21 pm |

David

NGC6240 has two black holes orbiting at 3,000 light years apart. We can be certain that they are disk like in shape with only the rim moving at close to the speed of light. The poles are not moving at speeds where the sum of the velocity of the two is relativistic. The rims can't collide because time becomes zero. In between the rims will be turbulance where tiny black holes are formed as twisted areas of space-time collapse. If the sum of two twisted or dragged space-time frames is greater than the speed of light then it must collapse. If they last long enough they can explode in jets of photons and particles draining away energy from the black hole interractions. You would think that the sum of two black holes spinning close to the speed of light would be less than the sum of their mass before collision. The rest of the back hole should form a vertical torus until they violently recoil.

February 28, 2013 at 2:49 am |

Spock

You have failed to take into account the berilium time flux equation. Fool.

February 28, 2013 at 8:33 am |

Mo

How about the spin of the black hole? If 2 galaxies, with 2 equal in size black holes spinning in 2 different directions, collide and merge, do we expect a different result than the usual merge and expansion of the resultant black hole?

February 27, 2013 at 11:26 pm |

dcoke

They got it all wrong. This is Harry Potter science.
99% of unverse is made of plasma, charged particles that are accelerated by electric currents and spiral in the resulting magnetic fields, creating synchrotron radiation that can shine in all high energy frequencies, including extreme ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays.
No need for supernatural super-fast spinning hypothetical "black holes" here.

February 27, 2013 at 11:10 pm |

Karen M

No...most of the Universe is dark matter.

February 28, 2013 at 1:11 pm |

Nick

No, most of the universe is Dark Energy ;)

March 1, 2013 at 1:35 am |

RT

"For this particular black hole, if you were standing near the event horizon – the point at which nothing can escape from a black hole – you would be turning around once every four minutes just to stand still."

Bizarre description... but I guess we're like comic characters in a 2D world trying to understand what 3D physical objects are like. LOL!

February 27, 2013 at 11:00 pm |

William

Sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong century. Maybe we're close to a black hole.

February 27, 2013 at 11:00 pm |

DLMuerte

"We still don't know how black holes came to be in the first place."

.__________.

Don't they come from stars collapsing upon themselves, which came from lots of dust in the beginning of the universe? I think the correct term here is that you guys don't know where matter came from.

And then again, no one knows that.

February 27, 2013 at 9:48 pm |

Matthew

I am really sorry, 3 am is an unGodly time. I posted a response to this separately, but here it is as a reply to your comment. Just in case you are interested.

@DLMurte,

The issue is, that while you can explain relatively "small" blackholes as the collapse of a star, you really can't explain a 2 million solar mass blackhole as the result of a massive star collapsing.That would require absolutely gargantuan stars (the maximum size I have ever seen discussed in my classes have been about 300 Solar masses or approximately 4 orders of magnitude smaller). Further, there are some blackholes another 3 orders of magnitude larger even than the one discussed here.

Also, don't forget that a super-massive blackhole seems to be a central characteristic to almost all galaxies. So it seems likely that these blackholes are tied galactic evolution rather than a big star collapsing. So the question is actually how did these specific black holes form?

If you want more information, wikipedia is never bad place to start...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermassive_black_hole

February 28, 2013 at 3:57 am |

jorgath

Couldn't you explain it by having a normal black hole be created in a region that's especially dense with stars, like the center of a galaxy? Or a few dozen such black holes that then crash into each other and merge?

February 28, 2013 at 9:11 am |

Smart

Sounds plausible J.

February 28, 2013 at 9:14 am |

Matthew

I suppose that sounds reasonable. The issue would be, space is really big, and really empty. Even if it was "dense," it would not be dense to us at all. Also, even assuming each of these stars became a 100 solar mass blackhole, that would require 2000 such blackholes for this example. In the case of a blackhole at 6 billion solar masses, this would be more like 60 million solar masses.

The big thing is that we really, really don't know. So, the initial statement by the scientists still stands.

February 28, 2013 at 2:06 pm |

earl

read the book called 'a universe from nothing.' turns out we don't understand what 'nothing' is. but we know it is unstable. that.s where matter comes from.

February 28, 2013 at 5:58 am |

President Santorum

I let you know. I'm going to Detroit next month

February 28, 2013 at 6:53 am |

minor von

til I looked at the bank draft that said $8383, I be certain that...my... neighbour woz like they say truly bringing home money in there spare time on their apple laptop.. there dads buddy haz done this 4 only and resently took care of the depts on there apartment and bought a brand new Ford Mustang. this is where I went........... BIT40.ℂOℳ

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